are Phosphorylation site names unique?

Question

[tjal0001]

Hi,

I am new to biology and I have a question about phosphorylation site and protein kinase. I know that each protein kinase could have 1 or more than 1 phosphorylation sites. For example, mTOR has s2448, T2446 and so far. Is there any other protein kinase that would have a phosphorylation site named as s2448 or T2446 ad so far. I mean are phosphorylation sites' names unique or there are some protein kinases which have the same phosphorylation sites' names?

Kind Regards,

Answer 1

[Jean-Karim Heriche]

Phosphorylation sites on proteins are "named" after the amino-acid affected, e.g. for mTOR, T2446 means the phosphate is on threonine in position 2446 in the protein sequence. They are only unique in combination with a protein identifier since multiple proteins can have the same amino-acid in the same position.

[tjal0001]

Thanks a lot Jean. I created a network in Python from mTOR signaling pathway(SBML file) and there are 1144 phosphorylation sites and they are unique! Is it because of uniqueness of protein kinases in the pathway? Besides, could you please let explain this part a bit more( in position 2446 in the protein sequence). Sorry my major is computer science and I am a bit lost in these concepts.

[Jean-Karim Heriche]

Position in protein means here the index of the amino acid in the protein sequence, starting at 1, i.e. T2446 means a threonine is the the 2446th amino-acid in the sequence. I don't know your data so I can't say much about it.