Insilico Analysis of Mucin- Binding Proteins in Lactic Acid Bacteria

Abstract

Regular use of certain drugs and other antibiotics has led to the development of many side effects and drug resistance in the humans. But researchers have already started to find out various other alternatives to combat the negative effects. Among these, probiotics are being used up as an alternate and are consumed to great extent by humans in day to day life. Lactobacillus is the most common bacterial strain that is commercially used in various probiotic products. These LABs must bind to the human epithelial gut in order to perform their activity. For binding, mucin binding protein plays a major role by providing the attachment sites to the bacteria. In this paper we have analyzed the mucin- binding proteins in Lactobacillus plantarum using computational tools. L plantarum was chosen due to its ability to show strong binding towards epithelial surface. The FASTA sequences were extracted from UniProtkb database and were used for further comparison based on different parameters. Physicochemical analysis was done by ProtPARAM software, followed by secondary structure prediction (CFSSP software) and tertiary structure prediction (CASTp software). The MUBs motifs were also compared with the motifs of gut pathogens using TOMTOM tool. Moreover, the particular motifs responsible during adhesion were being searched in MUBs using Motif Finder. These motifs showed some similarity with the binding motifs of pathogens present in human gut. Physicochemical analysis showed that these mucin binding proteins are thermostable. GRAVY value indicates that these are soluble proteins which are hydrophilic in nature. These proteins do not have any effect of cellular proteases and hence are able to survive in the small intestine. These chosen strains have conserved sequences determined by their secondary structure analysis using the CFSSP server. Moreover, it was found that these mucin binding proteins has some of the motifs having the same sequences as present in that of pathogens. Hence, these are able to show the competitive adherence against the pathogens by blocking the binding sites for pathogens and resulting in their elimination. The study conducted showed the presence of MUBs in Lactobacillus plantarum and also same motifs were found in pathogen which proved the competitive adherence of L. plantarum against pathogens hence providing some light to the host- microbes interactions for other future studies too.