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Asparagine repeats facilitate purine-loading - an adaption to decrease dsRNA-triggering of immune defences

Posted by forsdyke on 30 Aug 2013 at 22:02 GMT

The authors note that 'several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the asparagine repeats' and cite our studies of the repeats in "P. falciparum" and Epstein-Barr virus (Xue and Forsdyke 2003). One explanation, contained in the title of our paper, is that the repeats function at the nucleic acid-level. The amino acids in the repeat are mere 'place-holders.' This is entirely consistent with the elegant studies of Muralidharem and Goldberg. It is notable that codons for asparagine (AAU, AAC) 'purine load' the corresponding gene and mRNA. Since purines do not base-pair with purines, the formation of dsRNA becomes less likely. For further background on this please see: http://post.queensu.ca/~f... and Chapter 14 of my textbook "Evolutionary Bioinformatics" (Springer 2011).

No competing interests declared.