In Silico Analysis of Non Synonymous Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (nsSNPs) of SMPX Gene in Hearing Impairment

BackgroundMutations in SMPX gene can disrupt the normal activity of the SMPX protein which is involved in hearing process.\n\nObjectiveIn this study, deleterious non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms were isolated from the neutral variants by using several bioinformatics tools.\n\nMethodFirstly, dbSNP database hosted by NCBI was used to retrieve the SNPs of SMPX gene, secondly, SIFT was used primarily to screen the damaging SNPs. Further, for validation PROVEAN, PredictSNP and PolyPhen 2 were used. I-Mutant 3 was utilized to analyze the protein stability change and MutPred predicted the molecular mechanism of protein stability change. Finally evolutionary conservation was done to study their conservancy by using ConSurf server.\n\nResultsA total of 26 missense (0.6517%) and 3 nonsense variants (0.075%) were retrieved and among them 4 mutations were found deleterious by all the tools of this experiment and are also highly conserved according to ConSurf server. rs772775896, rs759552778, rs200892029 and rs1016314772 are the reference IDs of deleterious mutations where the substitutions are S71L, N19D, A29T and K54N. Loss of Ubiquitination, loss of methylation, loss of glycosylation, and loss of MoRF binding motifs are the root causes of protein stability change.\n\nConclusionThis is the first study regarding nsSNPs of SMPX gene where the most damaging SNPs were screened that are associated with the SMPX gene and can be used for further research to study their effect on protein structure and function, their dynamic behavior and how they actually affect proteins flexibility.