The Daily Bulletin

Please join the Biology Department and the Great Lakes Center for the seminar “Distribution, Evolution, and Functional Importance of the Enigmatic Inteins,” presented by Olga Novikova, assistant professor of biology at Buffalo State University, on Monday, September 11, at 3:00 p.m. in Science and Math Complex 151.

Attendees are welcome to arrive at 2:30 p.m. to enjoy coffee and cookies before the seminar.

Abstract
Inteins, also called protein introns, are self-splicing mobile elements found in all domains of life, as well as numerous viruses. Inteins carry out unique biochemistry called protein splicing, which is a multistep biochemical reaction composed of both the cleavage and formation of peptide bonds. Protein splicing capabilities of inteins are “nature’s gift to protein engineers” and have been exploited in numerous biotechnological applications. Although inteins are famous as versatile protein splicing tools, the importance of inteins for the native host and their function remain largely a mystery. In Dr. Novikova’s lab, her team combines bioinformatics and experimental research with the goal of elucidating potential functional roles of inteins in microorganisms. The large-scale survey of genomic data highlights a biased distribution of inteins among functional categories of proteins in both bacteria and archaea, with a strong preference for a single network of functions containing replisome proteins. Many nonorthologous, functionally equivalent replicative proteins in bacteria and archaea carry inteins, suggesting a selective retention of inteins in proteins of particular functions across domains of life. This peculiar bias provides hints for the functional importance of the inteins. They argue that selective retention of some inteins might be beneficial under certain environmental stresses, to act as panic buttons that reversibly inhibit specific networks, consistent with the observed intein distribution. They propose that inteins can act as environmental sensors that adapt to a particular niche and could potentially increase the chance of the intein becoming fixed in a population. Indeed, there are inteins modulated in a stimulus-dependent manner, which points to the possibility that some inteins may adapt to intracellular niche and become post-translational regulatory elements.