Final Abstract Writing and Research Wrap Up 4/24/19

Rationale

The rationale behind today in lab was to create a final abstract in preparation for our final presentation. In addition, when we were done with our abstract, we continued working on sequencing and protein folding in order to collect the necessary data.

Tools/Procedure

1. Final abstract was submitted
2. MEME Motif was used to find repeating motifs in the TMPs of selected proteins from each usable cluster
3. The phylogenetic tree generated by ClustalOmega was used to examine if motifs appeared to be related

Results

The results above were generated using the MEME software to find motifs. The logo above represents a motif that was found in almost all 43 selected TMPs suggesting an area of conservation. In addition, when searching for other common motifs several appeared with much less frequency but much more similarity, which will require further research. This motif shows that there is less similarity in the actual amino acid sequences, but the color coding suggests that structure is more likely to be conserved as many of the amino acids at a location are color-coded the same, suggesting that the amino acids will behave very similarly. In addition, while analysis of the phylogenetic tree is incomplete, it appears that there are definite examples of motifs being related to each other.

***I made a mistake when I previously reported that the motifs were found in all 43 sequences, while some are, the biggest one I found was not and I now need to examine the implications of this***

Conclusion

The motifs I’ve found suggest that there areas of conserved amino acids, but maybe not one unifying motif that I wanted to find.

Future Plans

In the future, we will continue to look for similarities and difference in the amino acid while continuing our folding of proteins to try to figure out what to make of the conserved regions we’ve found in TMPs. We will also complete our final research presentation.