ELVIS Is Everywhere

It started as a way to blow off a little steam during a late night in the lab. I was a mere graduate student in 1992, doing what I was told, probing the GenBank DNA database for conserved promoter sequences. I was still learning, and after days of searching (which never yielded any significant results), I started tinkering with software. I found a protein database that also could be searched by using a tool called BLAST. I knew nothing of BLAST, but it was late and I wanted to hunt for something fun, something different. So, I turned on the radio, which was banned during the day but could be blasted (forgive me) in the wee hours.Sometimes you hear weird things on the radio at night, as I did that night – a song called "Elvis is Everywhere." "Everybody in outer space looks like Elvis 'cause Elvis is a perfect being," write Mo-Jo Nixon and Skip Jones. "We are all moving in perfect peace and harmony toward Elvisness/Soon all will become Elvis/Everything, everywhere will be Elvis/Why do you think they call it evolution anyway?/It's really Elvislution!"The extremely late hour affecting my brain, I was inspired to find out if this was true, if we really are moving toward a state of perfect Elvisness. Was Elvis, or should I say, ELVIS, really everywhere?Long story short, ELVIS must have left the database that night, because "he" (that is, the sequence Glu-Leu-Val-Ile-Ser) wasn't there. I figured he was only hiding, probably in rural North Dakota, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I could determine that ELVIS is everywhere, in everything.Over the years, the databases have improved since my initial foray into Elvisology. Today, I can conclude that not only is ELVIS omnipresent, he also controls our DNA. After probing the total collected SWISS-PROT protein database, I have found that although Elvis may have passed on, ELVIS is alive and well and living in the human proteome.I found 38 perfect hits (the "Elvisome"?) in the entire SWISS-PROT database, which has 140,126 protein sequences available, or 51,291,577 letters. This is more than twice what you'd expect by chance (51,291,577 divided by 205 equals 16 matches). The most hits, nine, were in the human proteome. The total human proteome comprises 25,474 total protein sequences, or 11,411,350 letters, so ELVIS should make four appearances or so. Of the nine proteins that contain ELVIS, seven control cell development in some way. Three of the seven are zinc finger proteins (ELVIS is not part of the actual zinc finger).A few of our fellow eukarya, including fruit flies, yeasts, mice, rats, have a little ELVIS in them, too. But at most, they have two hits, the majority to proteins that are homologous to the human versions. ELVIS also appears in Archaea and bacteria; he appears only once in most of these organisms, but he's there. Quod datum est: Elvislution happens.It must be noted that I tried many other terms. No significant matches could be found to THEKING, PRESLEY, ELVISPRESLEY, ELVISTHEKING, and ELVISISTHEKING. Conspiracy buffs, citing as proof that Elvis still lives and walks among us because his middle name, Aron, is spelled Aaron on his tombstone, will be skeptical of the finding that neither ELVISAARXNPRESLEY nor ELVISARXNPRESLEY (changing O to X, because O is not an amino acid) matched any sequences in the database.KING produced a lot of hits, but that would be expected of a four-residue peptide. In the SWISS-PROT database, it should appear about 308 times, and I maxed out BLAST with 503 hits (there are probably more). It is interesting and perhaps surprising that KING and ELVIS never appear in the same sequence.What does all this mean? The skeptics might think that something occurring twice as often as a chance prediction is not that significant. I say wait until more proteins are added to the database; proteome projects for human and numerous other organisms are underway.It is possible that some people, due to some unfortunate polymorphism, may have no ELVIS in them. I predict that their phenotypes would have no rhythm, no sense of humor, and, depending on your point of view, a keen fashion sense. Elvis certainly enjoyed wearing sequins. Is it a coincidence that the software used to upload sequences to GenBank is called Sequin? I think not.ELVIS-deficients would probably avoid sequins and likely would be skeptical of this article. But I'm not going to shake in my blue suede shoes worrying about that.Thank you. Thank you very much!Caryn Evilia, caryn.evilia@jefferson.edu when not walking her hound dog or loving her children tenderly, is a postdoctoral fellow at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

ELVIS Is Everywhere

Not only that, he controls our DNA

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