Conserved motifs in mechanosensitive channels MscL and MscS

摘要

Mechanosensitive (MS) channels play a majorrole in protecting bacterial cells against hypo-osmoticshock. To understand their function, it is important to iden-tify the conserved motifs using sequence analysis methods.In this study, the sequence conservation was investigatedby an in silico analysis to generate sequence logos. Wehave identified new conserved motifs in the domains TM1,TM2 and the cytoplasmic helix from 231 homologs of MSchannel of large conductance (MscL). In addition, we haveidentified new motifs for the TM3 and the cytoplasmic car-boxy-terminal domain from 309 homologs of MS channelof small conductance (MscS). We found that the conserva-tion in MscL homologs is high for TM1 and TM2 in thethree domains of life. The conservation in MscS homologsis high only for TM3 in Bacteria and Archaea.