Bioinformatics analysis of diabetic retinopathy using functional protein sequences

• Published in: Medical hypotheses 2008-01, Vol.70 (1), p.148-155
• Main Authors: Rao, Allam Appa, Thota, Hanuman, Gumpeny, Ramachandra Sridhar, Akula, Annapurna, Changalasetty, Suresh Babu, Challa, Siva Reddy, Ravavarapu, Tejaswi, Akula, Siva Prasad, Divakar, Ch, Srinivas, K, Das, Undurti N
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aldehyde Reductase - chemistry; Aldehyde Reductase - genetics; Computational Biology; Diabetic Retinopathy - enzymology; Diabetic Retinopathy - genetics; Diabetic Retinopathy - physiopathology; Humans; Internal Medicine; Nitric Oxide Synthase - chemistry; Nitric Oxide Synthase - genetics
• ISSN: 0306-9877; 1532-2777
• DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2007.03.033

Summary Diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of blindness among patients with diabetes mellitus. We evaluated the role of several proteins that are likely to be involved in diabetic retinopathy by employing multiple sequence alignment using ClustalW tool and constructed a phylogram tree using functional protein sequences extracted from NCBI. Phylogram was constructed using Neighbor-Joining Algorithm in bioinformatics approach. It was observed that aldose reductase and nitric oxide synthase are closely associated with diabetic retinopathy. It is likely that vascular endothelial growth factor, pro-inflammatory cytokines, advanced glycation end products, and adhesion molecules that also play a role in diabetic retinopathy may do so by modulating the activities of aldose reductase and nitric oxide synthase. These results imply that methods designed to normalize aldose reductase and nitric oxide synthase activities could be of significant benefit in the prevention and treatment of diabetic retinopathy.