Conclusion
To sum up, the bioinformatic investigation of three
key binding interactions of hCRP was done. It can be
argued that calcium is the most important binding
interaction since it plays a major role in further
binding interactions with phosphocholine. On the
other hand, phosphocholine has the importance of
facilitating the hCRP binding to CWPS. C1q-hCRP
complex leads to the activation of the complement
system of the innate immune system which proves
the importance of CRP in infection and inflammation.
Homology of hCRP and other human pentraxins were
also investigated which have shown various results.
It was shown that hCRP is most closely related to
hSAP within human pentraxins due to their amino
acid sequence similarity. Meanwhile, hCRP is most
closely related to rabbit CRP when compared with
other species. On the other hand, Atlantic Horseshoe
Crab has the most conserved CRP which indicates the
importance of CRP in immune system since it is found
to be conserved evolutionarily from invertebrates to
vertebrates.
Acknowledgments
The bioinformatic investigation of hCRP was carried
out in 2018-2019 year period as a part of the Natural
Sciences programme undergraduate independent
research project module, NAT-30002, under the
supervision of Professor Trevor Greenhough and as a
part of the Structural Biology Research group of Keele
University, School of Life Sciences.
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