Journal article
Mosquito-Derived Anophelin Sulfoproteins Are Potent Antithrombotics
EE Watson, X Liu, RE Thompson, J Ripoll-Rozada, M Wu, I Alwis, A Gori, CT Loh, BL Parker, G Otting, S Jackson, PJB Pereira, RJ Payne
ACS Central Science | AMER CHEMICAL SOC | Published : 2018
Open access
Abstract
The anophelins are small protein thrombin inhibitors that are produced in the salivary glands of the Anopheles mosquito to fulfill a vital role in blood feeding. A bioinformatic analysis of anophelin sequences revealed the presence of conserved tyrosine residues in an acidic environment that were predicted to be post-translationally sulfated in vivo. To test this prediction, insect cell expression of two anophelin proteins, from Anopheles albimanus and Anopheles gambiae, was performed, followed by analysis by mass spectrometry, which showed heterogeneous sulfation at the predicted sites. Homogeneously sulfated variants of the two proteins were subsequently generated by chemical synthesis via..
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Awarded by European Social Fund
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the John A. Lamberton Research Scholarship and Australian Postgraduate Award for Ph.D. funding (E.E.W., X.L., and R.E.T.) and The National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (Project Grant 1120941) and the Australian Research Council (FT130100150 to R.J.P and DP150100383 to G.O) for funding. The authors also thank Dr. Nicholas Proschogo (School of Chemistry, The University of Sydney) for technical support with mass spectrometry. This work was funded in part by the European Social Fund through Programa Operacional Capital Humano (POCH) and by national funds through Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (Portugal) under the form of postdoctoral fellowship SFRH/BPD/108004/2015 (to J. R.-R.).