An array of protein tandem repeats is defined as several (at least two) adjacent copies having the same or similar sequence motifs. These periodic sequences are generated by internal duplications in both coding and non-coding genomic sequences. Repetitive units of protein tandem repeats are considerably diverse, ranging from the repetition of a single amino acid to domains of 100 or more residues.[1][2]
Schematic representation of tandem repeat sequence.
Example multiple sequence alignment of a pentapeptide repeat leading to a tandem repeat structure
In proteins, a "repeat" is any sequence block that returns more than one time in the sequence, either in an identical or a highly similar form. The degree of similarity can be highly variable, with some repeats maintaining only a few conserved amino acid positions and a characteristic length. Highly degenerate repeats can be very difficult to detect from sequence alone. Structural similarity can help to identify repetitive patterns in sequence.
Repetitiveness does not in itself indicate anything about the structure of the protein. As a "rule of thumb", short repetitive sequences (e.g. those below the length of 10 amino acids) may be intrinsically disordered, and not part of any foldedprotein domains. Repeats that are at least 30 to 40 amino acids long are far more likely to be folded as part of a domain. Such long repeats are frequently indicative of the presence of a solenoid domain in the protein.
Some well-known examples of proteins with tandem repeats are collagen, which plays a key role in the arrangement of the extracellular matrix; alpha-helical coiled coils having structural and oligomerization functions; leucine-rich repeat proteins, which specifically bind some globular proteins by their concave surfaces; and zinc-finger proteins, which regulate the expression of genes by binding DNA.
Tandem repeat proteins frequently function as protein-protein interaction modules. The WD40 repeat is a prime example of this function.[10]
Tandem repeats are ubiquitous in proteomes and occur in at least 14% of all proteins.[11] For example, they are present in almost every third human protein and even in every second protein from Plasmodium falciparum or Dictyostelium discoideum.[11][12] Tandem repeats with short repetitive units (especially homorepeats) are more frequent than others.[11]
Protein tandem repeats can be either detected from sequence or annotated from structure. Specialized methods were built for the identification of repeat proteins.[13]
Sequence-based strategies, based on homology search [14] or domain assignment,[15][16] mostly underestimate TRs due to the presence of highly degenerate repeat units.[17] A recent study to understand and improve Pfam coverage of the human proteome [17] showed that five of the ten largest sequence clusters not annotated with Pfam are repeat regions. Alternatively, methods requiring no prior knowledge for the detection of repeated substrings can be based on self-comparison,[18][19] clustering [20][21] or hidden Markov models.[22][23] Some others rely on complexity measurements [13] or take advantage of meta searches to combine outputs from different sources.[24][25]
Structure-based methods instead take advantage of the modularity of available PDB structures to recognize repetitive elements.[26][27][28][29][30]
^Heringa J (June 1998). "Detection of internal repeats: how common are they?". Current Opinion in Structural Biology. 8 (3): 338–45. doi:10.1016/s0959-440x(98)80068-7. PMID9666330.
^Andrade MA, Ponting CP, Gibson TJ, Bork P (May 2000). "Homology-based method for identification of protein repeats using statistical significance estimates". Journal of Molecular Biology. 298 (3): 521–37. doi:10.1006/jmbi.2000.3684. PMID10772867.
^Liu J, Xing Y, Hinds TR, Zheng J, Xu W (June 2006). "The third 20 amino acid repeat is the tightest binding site of APC for beta-catenin". J. Mol. Biol. 360 (1): 133–44. doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2006.04.064. PMID16753179.
^ abKajava AV (September 2012). "Tandem repeats in proteins: from sequence to structure". Journal of Structural Biology. 179 (3): 279–88. doi:10.1016/j.jsb.2011.08.009. PMID21884799.
^Stirnimann CU, Petsalaki E, Russell RB, Müller CW (October 2010). "WD40 proteins propel cellular networks". Trends in Biochemical Sciences. 35 (10): 565–74. doi:10.1016/j.tibs.2010.04.003. PMID20451393.
^ abcMarcotte EM, Pellegrini M, Yeates TO, Eisenberg D (October 1999). "A census of protein repeats". Journal of Molecular Biology. 293 (1): 151–60. doi:10.1006/jmbi.1999.3136. PMID10512723.