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Abstract
Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) is a widely spread enzyme playing a very important role in nerve signal transmission. As AChE controls key processes, its inhibition leads to the very fast death of an organism, including humans. However, when this feature is to be used for killing of unwanted organisms (i.e. mosquitoes), one is faced with the question - how much do AChEs differ between species and what are the differences? Here, a theoretical point of view was utilized to identify the structural basis for such differences. The various primary and tertiary alignments show that AChEs are very evolutionary conserved enzymes and this fact could lead to difficulties, for example, in the search for inhibitors specific for a particular species.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic (KK, DJ), Grant No. FVZ0000604, Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic, Grants No. MSM0021622413 (ZK) and LC06030 (JK), and Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, Grant No. 204/03/H016 (JW).