The proteinaceous Lepidopteran chorions are used in our lab, as a model system towards unraveling the routes and rules of formation of natural protective amyloids. Therefore, we constructed LepChorionDB a relational database, containing all Lepidoptera chorion proteins identified to date. Lepidoptera chorion proteins can be classified in two major protein families, A and B. This classification was based on multiple sequence alignments of conserved key residues, in the central domain of, well characterized, silkmoth chorion proteins. These alignments were used to build Hidden Markov Models in order to search various DataBases.

Acknowledgments: This work was a collaboration of the Department of Cell Biology and Biophysics, University of Athens and the Centre of Immunology & Transplantation Biomedical Research Foundation, Academy of Athens.

Nikolaos G. Giannopoulos^1,2, Ioannis Michalopoulos¹, Nikos C. Papandreou², Apostolos Malatras^1,2, Vassiliki A. Iconomidou² and Stavros J. Hamodrakas²

¹Centre of Immunology & Transplantation, Biomedical Research Foundation, Academy of Athens
²Biophysics and Bioinformatics Laboratory, Faculty of Biology, University of Athens

To cite LepChorionDB: Giannopoulos, N.G., Michalopoulos, I., Papandreou, N.C., Malatras, A., Iconomidou, V.A., and Hamodrakas, S.J. (2013). LepChorionDB, a database of Lepidopteran chorion proteins and a set of tools useful for the identification of chorion proteins in Lepidopteran proteomes. Insect Biochem Mol Biol 43, 189-196.