Following the Viterbi Path to Deduce Flagellar Actin-Interacting Proteins of Leishmania spp.: Report on Cofilins and Twinfilins

• Main Authors: Pacheco, Ana Carolina L, Araujo, Fabiana F, Kamimura, Michel T, Medeiros, Sarah R, Viana, Daniel A, Oliveira, Fatima de Cassia E, Filho, Raimundo Araujo, Costa, Marcilia P, Oliveira, Diana M
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0094-243X
• DOI: 10.1063/1.2816636

For performing vital cellular processes, such as motility, eukaryotic cells rely on the actin cytoskeleton, whose structure and dynamics are tightly controlled by a large number of actin-interacting (AIP) or actin-related/regulating (ARP) proteins. Trypanosomatid protozoa, such as Leishmania, rely on their flagellum for motility and sensory reception, which are believed to allow parasite migration, adhesion, invasion and even persistence on mammalian host tissues to cause disease. Actin can determine cell stiffness and transmit force during mechanotransduction, cytokinesis, cell motility and other cellular shape changes, while the identification and analyses of AIPs can help to improve understanding of their mechanical properties on physiological architectures, such as the present case regarding Leishmania flagellar apparatus. This work conveniently apply bioinformatics tools in some refined pattern recognition techniques (such as hidden Markov models (HMMs) through the Viterbi algorithm/path) in order to improve the recognition of actin-binding/interacting activity through identification of AIPs in genomes, transcriptomes and proteomes of Leishmania species. We here report cofilin and twinfilin as putative components of the flagellar apparatus, a direct bioinformatics contribution in the secondary annotation of Leishmania and trypanosomatid genomes.