Identification of hypothetical proteins with putative arsenate reductase properties in cyanobacteria by bioinformatics approach

This study focuses on the identification of proteins, which are annotated as hypothetical proteins, but possess putative arsenate reductase properties among cyanobacteria, by using bioinformatics approach. In the present work, we have chosen the protein sequence of the gene all0195, which was annotated as hypothetical protein and later identified as arsenate reductase in Anabaena sp. PCC 7120. For this selected reference protein, we searched for conserved orthologs among other 74 sequenced cyanobacteria using the bidirectional best hits method. A total of seven hypothetical proteins were identified as bidirectional best hits for the protein All0195 of Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 across the 74 sequenced cyanobacterial species. These protein sequences of the predicted bidirectional hits were further in-depth analyzed using different bioinformatics tools. From the in-depth bioinformatics analysis, it was observed that the hypothetical proteins, which were identified by using bioinformatics approach, were found to have the properties of arsenate reductase proteins and were very similar to the protein All0195 of Anabaena.