Abstract
BACKGROUND: Fibrocyte-specific protein, otospiralin, is a small protein, widely expressed in the central nervous system as neuronal cell bodies and glia. The increased expression of otospiralin in reactive astrocytes implicates its role in signaling pathways and reparative mechanisms subsequent to injury. Indeed, otospiralin is considered to be essential for the survival of fibrocytes of the mesenchymal nonsensory regions of the cochlea. It seems that other functions of this protein are not yet completely understood. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Amino acid sequences of otospiralin from 12 vertebrates were derived from National Center for Biotechnology Information database. Phylogenetic analysis and phylogeny estimation were performed using MEGA 5.0.5 program, and neighbor-joining tree was constructed by this software. RESULTS: In this computational study, the phylogenetic tree of otospiralin has been investigated. Therefore, dendrograms of otospiralin were depicted. Alignment performed in MUSCLE method by UPGMB algorithm. Also, entropy plot determined for a better illustration of amino acid variations in this protein. CONCLUSION: In the present study, we used otospiralin sequence of 12 different species and by constructing phylogenetic tree, we suggested out group for some related species.