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Prp8 intein in fungal pathogens: target for potential antifungal drugs
Author(s) -
Liu Xiang-Qin,
Yang Jing
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/j.febslet.2004.07.016
Subject(s) - intein , cryptococcus neoformans , aspergillus fumigatus , biology , microbiology and biotechnology , aspergillus nidulans , protein splicing , computational biology , rna splicing , genetics , gene , rna , mutant
Inteins are self‐splicing intervening sequences in proteins, and inteins of pathogenic organisms can be attractive drug targets. Here, we report an intein in important fungal pathogens including Aspergillus fumigatus , Aspergillus nidulans , Histoplasma capsulatum , and different serotypes of Cryptococcus neoformans . This intein is inside the extremely conserved and functionally essential Prp8 protein, and it varies in size from 170 aa in C. neoformans to 819 aa in A. fumigatus , which is caused by the presence or absence of an endonuclease domain and a putative tongs subdomain in the intein. Prp8 inteins of these organisms were demonstrated to do protein splicing in a recombinant protein in Escherichia coli . These findings revealed Prp8 inteins as attractive targets for potential antifungal drugs to be identified using existing selection and screening methods.