Although the impact of these mutational trends in MOMP evolution is not known, the gain or loss of certain amino acids were already shown to influence the structure of several bacterial porins [12].
Analysis of the mutational trends in this region of the α-helix between the 8q24.3 ZNF paralogues should help to clarify likely duplication scenarios and functional, i.e. nucleic acid binding residue, variability.
To examine the mutational trend of amino acid composition in MOMP evolution, we used the ompA sequences of prototype strains as baseline.
Considering the above evidenced strong selective pressure acting on this dominant chlamydial antigen, we examined the mutational trend of amino acid gains and losses in MOMP evolution.
If one of the latter is dominant, then it may be possible to monitor functional mutational trends hydropathically, through quantitative trends in solvent-accessible amino-acid specific surface areas [ 11, 12].
From the estimated GCeq values (fig. 4), two different mutational trends are apparent: 1) toward AT-richness in SC regions and 2) toward GC-richness in IR regions.
Although substitution at residues 530 and 549 of the H protein has a crucial role in host switching [ 10], the observed mutational trends indicate that a geographic signature cannot be ruled out.
In order to assess how well CMC spectrums estimate the aggregate non-synonymous mutational trends of a single gene, a CMC matrix was applied to seven unrelated genes to compute the most likely point mutations.
In this worldwide survey, we intended to provide a more complete picture of the mutational trends of the C. trachomatis leading multi-subunit vaccine candidate.
Even with this extremely short time-scale (about six decades), our results clearly evidence the existence of intrinsic mutational trends for MOMP, a crucial antigen, adhesin, and porin.
