Identification of Glycosyltransferases Focusing on Golgi Transmembrane Region

Abstract

To uncover novel glycosyltransferase (GT) genes from the entire human genome, we have developed a computational method for determining the transmembrane region of Golgi-localized signal-anchor-type GT. The characteristics of GT were extracted by comparison with those of the plasma-membrane-localized signal-anchor-type membrane protein (PM) and the protein with signal peptide (SP), whose topologies are similar to that of GT. The Golgi-membrane-spanning region of GT was distinguished from PMs and SPs with sensitivity and specificity exceeding 95% using the position-specific score matrix (PSSM) of amino acid propensity based on hydropathy alignment. Using our algorithm for determining the Golgi-membrane-spanning region of GTs, an improvement in the efficiency of GT gene detection is expected.