Phylogenetic Analysis and In Silico Characterization of Cytochrome P450 1A (Cyp1A) Protein from the African Catfish, Clarias gariepinus (Burchell, 1822)

Abstract
The CYP family enzymes are broadly used as biomarkers because of their pattern of expression. This study describes the application of in silico tools to predict the physico-chemical characters of CYP1A protein from the catfish, Clarias gariepinus. The nucleotide sequence analysis of C. gariepinus CYP1A gene showed higher similarity with C. batrachus and reflected in the phylogenetic tree. The comparative modelling results showed this CYP1A protein was highly similar with the 3-D crystal structure of human Cytochrome p450 1A1 (PDB: 1BE3). The prediction results depicted that most of the amino acids formed alpha helix. The predicted pI was 9.10, hydropathycity was -0.226, exposed and buried residues were 61.67, 38.33% respectively. Ramachandran plot analysis showed that most of the amino acids falling on the favoured region and exhibited right- handed alpha helices as the most stable secondary structure. Some amino acids were also found to form loops to interconnect different helices. The CYP1A protein was predicted to be localized in the mitochondrion of the eukaryotic cell.