Journal of Bioinformatics, Proteomics and Imaging AnalysisJournal of Bioinformatics, Proteomics and Imaging AnalysisJournal of Bioinformatics, Proteomics and Imaging AnalysisJournal of Bioinformatics, Proteomics and Imaging Analysis2381-0793Ommega Online PublishersNew Jersey, USA74710.15436/2381-0793.16.018Research ArticleUsing Integrated Bioinformatics Strategy to Identify Critical Factors for the Structural Integrity of Salmonella T3SSUsing Integrated Bioinformatics Strategy to Identify Critical Factors for the Structural Integrity of Salmonella T3SSbinxue1Department of Cell Biology Microbiology and Molecular Biology School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Tampa FL 33612 USA 2College of Automation Harbin Engineering University Harbin Heilongjiang 15001 ChinaEditor* E-mail: binxue@usf.edu
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
20160302201621JBPR-16-RA-74718012016290120162016Creative Commons Attribution LicenseThis is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. emsp emsp Type-III secretion system of Gram-negative bacteria is the major molecular machine responsible for the infection of host cells and the in-host survival of the bacteria The T3SS is composed of three structural components basal body needle and export apparatus The needle is an extracellular protein complex that recognizes host cells and transport bacterial effector proteins into the host cells The basal body forms a channel across the bacterial membranes and also provides structural support to the needle The export apparatus selects effector proteins and initiates the transportation of these proteins Since all these three structural components are formed by specific proteins abolishing the interaction of these proteins will disrupt the structural integrity of one or more structural components of T3SS and eventually affect the infection and or virulence of the bacteria In this study we analyzed the sequential structural and interactomic features of Salmonella T3SS structural proteins We found that these structural proteins have abundant short and or long disordered regions that overlap with other structured functional regions We identified critical interaction patterns and hub proteins SipB SpaO and SpaS in the interactome of T3SS structural proteins We also predicted novel binding motifs for six T3SS structural proteins of which the interaction partners are unknown These results are expected to shed light on future studies in the fields of T3SS structural integrity and drug discovery 10