[Identification of exotoxin-specific motifs/domains in bacterial exotoxin sequences and corresponding gene ontology analysis].

OBJECTIVE:To identify the exotoxin-specific motifs/domains in bacterial exotoxin sequences, and to expand understanding of bacterial exotoxins pathogenic mechanisms. METHODS:We constructed a non-pathogenic bacterial proteins database and collected 89 bacterial exotoxin sequences from Virulence factor database (VFDB), then we analyzed these protein sequences by motif/domain search using InterProScan (www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/InterProScan/). RESULTS:We identified 39 exotoxin-specific motifs/domains in 89 bacterial exotoxin sequences. CONCLUSION:The identified exotoxin-specific motifs/domains were closely related to the functions of the exotoxins and could be used as template to search for new exotoxins by mining pathogenic bacterial genomes. The analysis of the acquired Gene Ontology (GO) items was to further expend our understanding of bacterial exotoxin pathogenic mechanisms.