ABSTRACT

Selenium is an essential trace element for which both beneficial and toxic effects in living beings’ health have been described.Its importance is mainly based on its requirement for the biosynthesis of selenocysteine, the twenty first amino acid. The selenocysteine (Sec) is encoded by UGA codons, acting usually as STOP codons. Therefore, a specific structure located in the 3'-UTR region in eukaryotes named SECIS (SElenoCysteine Insertion Sequence) is needed for including the Sec within the peptide chain. Furthermore, other selenoprotein translation machinery elements help on the Sec insertion. Hence, proteins that have one or more Sec are known as selenoproteins, all of them forming the selenoproteome, which is highly conserved in organisms.

The main aim of this project was to identify and annotate the Urocitellus parryii's (Artic ground squirrel) selenoproteins, selenoprotein machinery factors and proteins related to selenium metabolism. These proteins were predicted through their comparison with the human selenoproteome obtained from SelenoDB.

In our project we have finally predicted 21 selenoproteins, 8 Cys-containing homologous and 2 selenoprotein translation machinery proteins. Generally, these results successfully match with our expectations.