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Parasporin Classification and Nomenclature:

Parasporin, a novel protein with a unique cytocidal activity, was first discovered from Bacillus thuringiensis by Mizuki et al. [Clin. Diagn. Lab. Immunol., 7, 625-634 (2000)]. The term parasporin is defined as "Bacillus thuringiensis and related bacterial parasporal proteins that are non-hemolytic but capable of preferentially killing cancer cells" [Katayama et al., J. Biochem. 137, 17-25 (2005)]. In 2006, Committee of Parasporin Classification and Nomenclature was organized to construct a taxonomically sound classification system based on the amino acid identity. The committee is comprised of the following members.
In the nomenclature scheme, the same number and letter system for Cry, Cyt and Vip toxins of B. thuringiensis was adopted so that a novel parasporin protein is assigned to a new class incorporating four ranks such as PS100Aa1. Currently, approximately 95, 78, and 45% sequence identities are the borders of the four ranks.

Criteria for Parasporin:

A protein to be included in the parasporin nomenclature must be:

1) B. thuringiensis and related bacterial parasporal proteins that are non-hemolytic but capable of preferentially killing cancer cells.

Available Lists and Figures on this Nomenclature Site:

There are lists and figures available on this web site, clicking on the following links will open them in separate windows:

1) List of parasporin: All toxins involved in the nomenclature are listed.
2) Dendrogram of parasporin: This shows the relationships of the established parasporin proteins.
3) Recent news: This will be updated when the nomenclature accepts and lists up a new parasporin.

Citation of the Nomenclature:

The correct format for the citation is:

Okumura, S., Ohba, M., Mizuki, E., Crickmore, N., Côté, J.-C., Nagamatsu, Y., Kitada, S., Sakai, H., Harata, K. and Shin, T. "Parasporin nomenclature" (2010)
http://parasporin.fitc.pref.fukuoka.jp/

Aquiring a Name for Your Protein:

The committee encourages researchers, who discovered a new parasporin protein, to submit it to the nomenclature and get a logical name to it. The sequence of a new parasporin can be submitted elctronically using this form. Before the submission of an amino acid sequence of a new parasporin to the nomenclature, the sequence must be made publically available, usually via the DDBJ, EMBL or GenBank databases.

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