title: Why are there so many carbohydrate-active enzyme-related genes in plants?
abstract: Plants contain far more carbohydrate-active enzyme-encoding genes than any other organism sequenced to date. The extremely large number of glycosidase and glycosyltransferase-related genes in plant genomes can be explained by the complex structure of the plant cell wall, by ancient genome duplication and by recent local duplications, but also by the recent emergence of novel and unrelated protein functions based on widely available pre-existing scaffolds.
authors.affiliation: Architecture et Fonction des Macromolécules Biologiques, UMR 6098, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Universités Aix-Marseille I and II, 31 Chemin Joseph Aiguier, 13402 Marseille cedex 20, France.
authors.forename: Pedro M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Coutinho
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Stam
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Blanc
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Henrissat
mesh_terms: D050260:Carbohydrate Metabolism; D002473:Cell Wall / Q000201:enzymology; D018745:Genome, Plant; D006026:Glycoside Hydrolases / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D016695:Glycosyltransferases / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D010944:Plants / Q000201:enzymology / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D016695:Glycosyltransferases; D006026:Glycoside Hydrolases