The Role of Tyrosine Sulfation in Liver Regeneration

Student Name: 
Archita Bhattacharya
UCD Department: 
Department of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior
UCD Mentor: 
Grace L. Rosenquist

Tyrosine sulfation, the posttranslational modification of the amino acid tyrosine, has been discovered in countless major proteins in the body, and this study has predicted new sites in the proteins essential to liver regeneration. Liver proteins associated with regeneration were scored in a PSSM calculator. A wide variety of these proteins, including Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptors, Transforming Growth Factorsere found to have high scores, and a collection of predicted sulfation sites were found to also have natural variants. A total of 45 predicted sites were found with scores over the high cutoff of 2.42. In addition, 5 protein sites with high scores were found in clusters. The information on predicted sites could be used to understand regeneration of organs in other organisms and to develop methods aiding the natural process of liver regeneration.