Heat-stable enterotoxins signature

Prokaryotic heat-stable enterotoxins [1] are responsible for acute diarrhea. The active toxin is a short peptide of around twenty residues which contains six cysteines involved in three disulfide bonds, as shown in the following schematic representation:

            +-------+
       +- -|----+   |
        |    |       |   |
xxCCxxCCxxxCxxCxx
     |      |
    +----+

'C': conserved cysteine involved in a disulfide bond.

We have taken the pattern of cysteines, along with three conserved residues,
as a signature pattern for this group of proteins

-Consensus pattern: C-C-x(2)-C-C-x-P-A-C-x-G-C
[The six C's are involved in disulfide bonds]
-Sequences known to belong to this class detected by the pattern: ALL.
-Other sequence(s) detected in SWISS-PROT: NONE.
-Last update: April 1990 / Pattern and text revised.

[ 1] Shimonishi Y., Hidaka Y., Koizumi M., Hane M., Aimoto S., Takeda T., Miwatani T., Takeda Y. FEBS Lett. 215:165-170(1987).
{END}