Abstract

POU domain class 2 homebox 1 or POU2F1 is broadly known as an important transcription factor. Due to its association with different types of malignancies, POU2F1 became one of the key factors in pancancer analysis. However, in spite of considering this protein as a potential drug target, none of the drug targeting POU2F1 has been designed as of yet due to the extreme structural flexibility of this protein. In this article, we have proposed a three-level comprehensive framework for understanding the structural conservation and co-variation of POU2F1. First, a gene regulatory network based on the normal and pathological functions of POU2F1 has been created for better understanding the strong association between POU2F1 deregulation and cancers. After that, based on the evolutionary sequence space analysis, the comparative sequence dynamics of the protein members of POU domain family has been studied mostly between non-human and human species. Subsequently, the reciprocity effect of the residual co-variation has been identified through direct coupling analysis. Along with that, the structure of POU2F1 has been analyzed depending on quality assessment and normal mode-based structure network. Comparing the sequence and structure space information, the most significant set of residues viz., 3, 9, 13, 17, 20, 21, 28, 35, and 36 have been identified as structural facet for function. This study demonstrates that the structural malleability of POU2F1 serves as one of the prime reason behind its functional multiplicity in terms of protein moonlighting.

Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma