Correlations between predicted protein disorder and post-translational modifications in plants

Area of Science:

• Plant molecular biology
• Proteomics
• Structural biology

Background:

• Plant protein structural research lags behind animal and bacterial systems.
• Systematic studies on plant protein disorder and multiple post-translational modifications (PTMs) are lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between intrinsic protein disorder and multiple PTMs across plant proteomes.
• To compare these relationships in monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plant species.

Main Methods:

• Calculated the degree of intrinsic disorder for complete proteomes of eight plant species.
• Predicted sites for phosphorylation, glycosylation, acetylation, and methylation.
• Examined correlations between protein disorder and predicted PTM sites.

Main Results:

• Phosphorylation, acetylation, and O-glycosylation preferentially occur in disordered regions.
• Methylation tends to avoid disordered regions; N-glycosylation shows no universal preference.
• Monocot proteomes exhibit higher disorder, O-glycosylation, and R-methylation rates compared to dicots.
• Monocots show lower N-glycosylation, K-acetylation, and K-methylation rates than dicots.

Conclusions:

• Protein disorder is significantly linked to multiple PTMs in plants.
• Distinct proteome characteristics exist between monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous species regarding protein disorder and PTMs.