Where is the weak linkage in the globin chain?

Viroj Wiwanitkit

Department of Laboratory Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand

Abstract: Hemoglobinopathies are important inherited disorders with high prevalence in many tropical countries. Prediction of protein nanostructure and function is a great challenge in proteomics and structural genomics. Identifying the point vulnerable to mutation is a new trend in research on disorders at the genomic and proteomic level. A bioinformatics analysis was performed to determine the positions that tend to correspond with peptide motifs in the amino acid sequence of alpha and beta globin chains. To identify the weak linkage in alpha globin and beta globin chains, a new bioinformatics tool, GlobPlot, was used. For the alpha globin chain, 22 positions were identified: the disorders were found at positions 3–8, 38–42, 46–51, and 75–79. For the beta globin chain, 46 positions were identified: the disorders were found at positions 61–146. The study showed that weak linkages in alpha globin and beta globin chains can be identified and provide good information for predicting possible new mutations that could lead to new hemoglobinopathies.

Keywords: globin, hemoglobinopathy, protein structure, weak linkage