In silico characterization and modelling of Drosophila melanogaster chitin synthase

Abstract

Chitin synthase is known to be an important enzyme that catalyzes last step of chitin biosynthetic pathway. It causes linear polymerization of chitin from activated UDP-N-acetylglucosamine monomers in manner joined together by β-(1, 4)-linked. Chitin synthases are thus critical enzymes for synthesis of chitin and as well as for growth and development of insects. In this study, physiochemical properties and modeling of chitin synthase enzyme of Drosophilla melanogaster encoded by CS2 gene was analyzed using in silico approach. Various isoforms (isoforms C and D) of chitin synthase from CS2 gene were used in this study. Physiochemical properties such as molecular weight, theoretical isoelectric point, extinction coefficient, aliphatic index, instability index, total number of negatively and positively charged residues and grand average of hydrophathicity were computed. Along with these physiochemical properties cellular localilization, no. of transmembrane helices,other proteins with which these isoforms interact were also depicted using various tools.