Question

What it means by high sequence homology of cytokeratins in the following text:Sequence homology of cytokeratins is very high, but when the proteins are digested into peptides by trypsin they generate many unique peptides. In the amyloid deposits the cytokeratin peptides identified were mostly unique to one protein

What does high sequence homology of cytokeratins imply about the amyloids? What is the relationship between the sequence homology of cytokeratins and whether the generated peptides were identified to be mostly unique to one protein or multiple proteins? Is it harder to remove amyloids that have high sequence homology of cytokeratins?

Answer 1

High sequence homology of cytokeratins implies a close evolutionary relationship, indicating similar amino acid sequences and a common ancestry. Unique peptides in amyloids despite high homology may be due to disease processes, and the ease of amyloid removal is not directly linked to sequence homology.

Step-by-step explanation:

The term high sequence homology indicates that the amino acid sequences of cytokeratins are very similar across different proteins. This similarity is linked to the evolutionary relationship of the organisms that produced these proteins, suggesting a common ancestry. When proteins with high sequence homology are digested into peptides by trypsin, we would expect many of the resulting peptides to be similar. However, in the context of amyloid deposits, the cytokeratin peptides identified were found to be mostly unique to one particular protein. The relationship between the high sequence homology of cytokeratins and the generation of unique peptides may be due to the specificity of amyloid formation processes or disease pathogenesis. As for the difficulty of removing amyloids with high sequence homology, the text does not provide enough information to determine if it's harder or easier, since the ability to remove amyloids typically depends on multiple factors beyond sequence homology.