Exploration of the Computational Predicted Internal Tagging Preferred Protein Properties

Protein tags are commonly used in many biological experiments, and adding a tag to an intolerant sequence position can significantly damage the functions of a protein and affect the outcome of an experiment. Recently, an in-house computational prediction method, TagScore, was developed which uses sequence homology to identify non-conservative regions of proteins permissive of tagging. The properties of the proteins that are predicted by TagScore to prefer internal tagging were explored using gene enrichment strategies. Proteins that prefer internal tagging were found to be related to GTPase-associated proteins and sequence features with disordered and polar regions, as predicted by TagScore.