title: Genome-wide analysis of LIM gene family in Populus trichocarpa, Arabidopsis thaliana, and Oryza sativa.
abstract: In Eukaryotes, LIM proteins act as developmental regulators in basic cellular processes such as regulating the transcription or organizing the cytoskeleton. The LIM domain protein family in plants has mainly been studied in sunflower and tobacco plants, where several of its members exhibit a specific pattern of expression in pollen. In this paper, we finely characterized in poplar six transcripts encoding these proteins. In Populus trichocarpa genome, the 12 LIM gene models identified all appear to be duplicated genes. In addition, we describe several new LIM domain proteins deduced from Arabidopsis and rice genomes, raising the number of LIM gene models to six for both species. Plant LIM genes have a core structure of four introns with highly conserved coding regions. We also identified new LIM domain proteins in several other species, and a phylogenetic analysis of plant LIM proteins reveals that they have undergone one or several duplication events during the evolution. We gathered several LIM protein members within new monophyletic groups. We propose to classify the plant LIM proteins into four groups: alphaLIM1, betaLIM1, gammaLIM2, and deltaLIM2, subdivided according to their specificity to a taxonomic class and/or to their tissue-specific expression. Our investigation of the structure of the LIM domain proteins revealed that they contain many conserved motifs potentially involved in their function.
authors.affiliation: Equipe Xylème Unité Amélioration, Génétique et Physiologie Forestières, INRA-Orléans, Avenue de la Pomme de Pin, BP 20619 Ardon, F-45166 Olivet Cedex, France.
authors.forename: Dominique
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Arnaud
authors.forename: Annabelle
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Déjardin
authors.forename: Jean-Charles
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Leplé
authors.forename: Marie-Claude
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Lesage-Descauses
authors.forename: Gilles
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pilate
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics*; D016384:Consensus Sequence; D018076:DNA, Complementary / Q000302:isolation & purification; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D015723:Gene Library; D017343:Genes, Plant / Q000235:genetics*; D018745:Genome, Plant / Q000235:genetics*; D008957:Models, Genetic; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D005810:Multigene Family / Q000235:genetics*; D012275:Oryza / Q000235:genetics*; D010802:Phylogeny; D032107:Populus / Q000235:genetics*; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship
chemical_list: D018076:DNA, Complementary