An hyper text alignment of mutated sequences mutalign with amino acid numbering allows you to recover all the information on mutations just by selecting a particular amino acid in the alignment. The orignal table was first compiled by Shafferman A., Kronman C. and Ordentlich A. (1995)

The original sequences (natural or major allele) of the different species have been aligned.

The ? sign on top of a column is a link to a compilation of all mutations done in the different species at the indicated position. The Torpedo number refers to the numbering of amino acids in the Torpedo acetylcholinesterase. The numbering of amino acids for each line (species) refers to the numbering used in the original sequence paper and the numbers used in papers of site directed mutagenesis.

    A new feature of mutalign is the possibility to recover interactive 3D images of acetylcholinesterase showing the position of the particular mutated amino acid relatively to the catalytic center. Selecting the highlighted symbol (!) placed over the alignment, will allow the recovery of a 32 kbites file in kinemage format which can be viewed and manipulated locally on the client platform. The Torpedo marmorata AChE structure was used to built these models. Only the backbone of the protein is shown coloured in gold. The side chains of the amino acids of the catalytic triad are colored in cyan, and those of the aromatic residues bording the gorge are in green. The side chain of the mutated amino acid is in red. There are 133 images stored this way. A 'kinemage' [kinetic image] is a scientific illustration presented as an interactive computer display proposed by Protein Science http://www.prosci.uci.edu/. Operations on the displayed kinemage respond rapidly: the entire image can be rotated in real time, parts of the display can be turned on or off, and any amino acid can be identified by picking it. Kinemages are created from Brookhaven Protein Data Bank file(1ace.pdb) (ref) using the program PREKIN. The advantages is that the file is much shorter than the PDB files and is downloaded more rapidly. MAGE is a display program to view and explore kinemages; it presently runs on Macintosh, IBM-PC, and various UNIX computers. Kinemages are proposed as a subtype of the chemical MIME standard with the specification "chemical/x-kinemage" and file extension "kin". Browsers correctly configured will open directly the MAGE application when picking a kinemage file. This is done by editing the mime type in the general preference menu of the web browser. Programs, full instructions and the proposed MIME standard are described and can be obtained from the Protein Science Gopher Space. Protein Science Gopher SpaceMageSoftware. The MAGE and PREKIN programs are copyrighted Richardson. If your browser is not properly configurated you will just recover the kin file, and another viewer may be launched which will not give the proper 3D image.

For additionnal help please mail to arnaud.chatonnet (at) inra.fr

    Two forms are available to send results of experiments on mutated cholinesterase. The data will be used to update automatically the table and the mutalign. The first form will be used to send point mutations or multiple mutations. Amino acid numbering of torpedo acetylcholinesterase is used as the reference number, and the experimental mutation should be writen as for example Y72N for a mutation of tyrosine 72 into asparagine (Massoulie et al (1992) In Multidisciplinary Approaches to Cholinesterase Functions (Shafferman,A. and Velan, B., Eds) Plenum Press New-York pp285-288) . The second form can be used to send more complex mutants. Chimeraes deletions,etc.... these will be presented in another table in preparation. The format describing the protein which has been built is just a summary. webace