Determination the structure of BPSL1549 - Lab Report Example

Also, detecting and controlling the bacterium is difficult since it can survive outside host organisms (Buetow, et al., 2001). As connoted, the disease Melioidosis is caused by a protein found in the bacteria Burkholderia pseudomallei. The protein is dubbed BPSL1549. This protein makes the bacterial to be very lethal. The disease Melioidosis is manifest in two modes of pathogenesis. The acute phase that is characterized but high mortality rates and the latent phase (Buetow, et al., 2001). In the latent phase, there is self-secretion of the bacteria in the infected host and only affects the infected host in form of a disease when the individual immune system is compromised such as during other infections, during organ transplant and during old age.

Latent phase has been found to have a long life span that can go up to fifty years (Wongtrakoongate, et al., 2007). There is no detailed documentation describing the pathogenesis of the bacteria. Despite this, the genome of then bacteria has been sequenced and as a result, large and small chromosomes have been identified. By sequence similarity, its genes have been found to be similar to various other organisms. The similarity has shown that the bacteria Burkholderia pseudomallei is closely related to the bacteria B.

, pseudomallei, which is not pathogenic. Therefore, in depth analysis of the genes has to be done to facilitate a comparative analysis of the genes of these two bacteria to found out the function of the genes. One of the gene that is analysed in this experiment is BPSL1549 (Cruz, et al., 2011). This experiment’s major objective is to determine the protein structure of the gene BPSL1549 using the protein crystallography method of Seleno – methionine multi - wavelength anomalous dispersion. The results will be compared against a database containing known structure of genes