3bsqA Discussion

Multiple sequence alighment (MSA) revealed some conserved residues throughput the whole sulfatase family. Previous experiemnts on catalytic activity of sulfatases describe a set of residues which are essential for the function of sulfatases. A histidine residue (H) and two or more sequential arganine residues (R) are known to be essential, and also characteristic of the N-terminal active site of sulfatases. Our MSA resultaed a number of residues conserves in the N-terminus, along with a H and one R residue. When these conserved residues were marked in the three dimenetional view of ASK in PyMol, they all seemed clustered within a certain region of the molecule. This region is found in the core of the molecule, directly inside a pocket-like surface feature. This region is assumed to be the 'possible active site' of the protein.

Results of structural comparisons and protein-protein interactions resulted several other proteins, which were used for a second multiple sequence alighment. This alighment also showed a certain degree of conservation of previously described conserved residues.