By devising a novel computational approach to examining a large amount of data, scientists have gained insight into the intricate workings of proteins responsible for sensing their surroundings and transmitting that information inward. Despite being studied for decades, little is known about how these methyl-accepting chemotaxis proteins translate their exquisite detection abilities into a signal. The work of Igor Zhulin of ORNL's Computer Science and Mathematics Division and Roger Alexander of Georgia Tech, published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, represents a giant step in this area and illustrates that genome sequencing can deliver much-needed knowledge when clever computational approaches are applied to decode genomic information. In addition to identifying a new flexible signaling portion of the protein, Zhulin and Alexander found that changes in the signaling and adaptation domains in any methyl-accepting chemotaxis protein are tightly coupled. This coupling could explain the diversity of chemotaxis mechanisms, including how an attractant of one species could be a repellent of another. This research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and Science Alliance.
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