THE CHARACTERIZATION, EXPRESSION AND IN SILICO STUDIES ON THE SLC39A13 GENE; IT'S INVOLVEMENT IN BREAST CANCER

• Published in: International journal of modern physics. Conference series 2012, Vol.9, p.163-173
• Main Authors: ZAHARI, NORMAWATI MOHAMAD, CHONG, TEOH TEOW
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Mathematical and Computational Biology
• ISSN: 2010-1945; 2010-1945
• DOI: 10.1142/S2010194512005223

The zinc transporters superfamily is divided into four subfamilies, and SLC39A is one of the subfamilies. The SLC39A subfamily has 9 members. Based on our computer searchers, all 9 sequences each contain 8 transmembranes domains. Since it is related to the zinc transporters superfamily, the SLC39A subfamily may have the same function that is to transport zinc ion. This paper focus on SLC39A13 studies and using the recombinant technology with CHO cells, it is shown that the recombinant protein, pcDNA5/FRT/V5-His-TOPO®-SLC39A13, has 43kD molecular weight. A second study using immunofluorescence technique with MCF-7 cells, it is shown that the recombinant protein expresses intracellularly. Both studies demonstrate that SLC39A13 expresses in breast cancer cells line, therefore the gene has involvement in the development of breast cancer disease. In our computational studies which is divided into two; the homologous study and sequence analysis, both results are supporting our laboratory results. The homologous study using EMBL-EBI and UniProt tools concluded that SLC39A13 is a member to SLC39A subfamily and it is closely related to SLC39A7 member. Although the sequence analysis shows that the molecular weight of SLC39A13 is 38.35kD it is still comparable to our laboratory result. Separately, using Swiss-EMBnet tools, TMpred, has shown that SLC39A13 has 8 transmembranes domains similar to other family members of SLC39A subfamily. Another analysis using EMBL-EBI tools, PPsearch, shows that SLC39A13 has various protein motif such as the protein kinase C phospho, casein kinase II phospho, leucine zipper and ASN-glycosylation sites. These are the useful information that we need when we study its tertiary structure and simulation in the future.