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The first, second, third and fourth order Markov chain analysis on the amino-acid sequence of human dopamine β-hydroxylase

Molecular Psychiatry volume 5, pages 448–451 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

The repeated amino-acid sequences in human dopamine β-hydroxylase (DBH) may be indispensable for DBH activity, because such repetitions cannot be simply attributed to random chance. The amino acid sequence of human DBH was analysed according to two-, three-, four- and five-amino-acid sequences and their probabilities in human DBH were calculated. The first, second, third and fourth order Markov chain was used to calculate the transition probability for two-, three-, four- and five-amino-acid sequences. The longest repeated sequence is glycine-isoleucine-leucine-glutamic acid-glutamic acid, which appears twice in DBH. The results suggest that the amino acids with a high Markov transition probability may serve as the potential targets of new drugs, because they are unlikely to change into other amino acids.

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Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank S-M Yan MD, PhD at Department of Pathology, University of Udine, Italy for helpful discussion. The Electronic Engineer P Cossettini at the Centre for Advanced Research in Space Optics, Trieste, Italy is kindly acknowledged. Special thanks go to two anonymous Referees for their insightful comments and correcting the English in the previous version of manuscript.

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  1. Department of Basic Medicine, Biochemistry Section, National Institute for Minamata Disease, Minamata, 867, Kumamoto, Japan

    G Wu

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  1. G Wu
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Wu, G. The first, second, third and fourth order Markov chain analysis on the amino-acid sequence of human dopamine β-hydroxylase. Mol Psychiatry 5, 448–451 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4000732

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