Chemical Informatics

Structure Homology Modeling of Thaumetopoein, an Urticating Protein from Thaumetopoea pityocampa Schiff, Using SWISS-MODEL Workspace

Thaumetopoea pityocampa Schiff. or pine caterpillar, is a phyto; xylophagous lepidopteran. For protection against predators, this caterpillar produce an urticating hairs (setae) inducing increasingly cutaneous reactions in animals and humans (erusim). Caterpillar hairs contain a specific protein which has an urticating properties named thaumetopoein. In this study, we started with phylogenetic reconstruction of some chemosensory proteins family with thaumetopoein sequence, then we proceded to homology modeling to elucidate the threedimensional structure of this allergic protein and we got a more reliable model based on the results obtained (QMEAN score=0.73, Z-score=-0.75 with 0.940 a high global relative model SELECTpro confidence score) which is validated with two other models resulting from other web servers such as Phyre2 and MetaMQAPII.

Author(s):

Djillali Tahri,Mohammed Seba and Khedidja Benarous

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