Identification and in silico analysis of helical lipid binding regions in proteins belonging to the amphitropic protein family.

The role of protein-lipid interactions is increasingly recognized to be of importance in numerous biological processes. Bioinformatics is being increasingly used as a helpful tool in studying protein-lipid interactions. Especially recently developed approaches recognizing lipid binding regions in proteins can be implemented. In this study one of those bioinformatics approaches specialized in identifying lipid binding helical regions in proteins is expanded. The approach is explored further by features which can be easily obtained manually. Some interesting examples of members of the amphitropic protein family have been investigated in order to demonstrate the additional features of this bioinformatics approach. The results in this study seem to indicate interesting characteristics of amphitropic proteins and provide insight into the mechanistic functioning and overall understanding of this intriguing class of proteins. Additionally, the results demonstrate that the presented bioinformatics approach might be either an interesting starting point in protein-lipid interactions studies or a good tool for selecting new focus points for more detailed experimental research of proteins with known overall protein-lipid binding abilities.