POFs: what we don't know can hurt us.
Over a quarter of all eukaryotic genes encode proteins with obscure features that lack currently defined motifs or domains (POFs). Interestingly, most of the differences in gene repertoire among species were recently found to be attributed to POFs. A comparison of the Arabidopsis, rice and poplar genomes reveals that Arabidopsis contains 5069 POFs, of which 2045 have no obvious homologs in rice or poplar and are likely to be involved in species- or phylogenetic-specific functions in Arabidopsis. The study of POFs is an important endeavor that will shed much needed light on the genetic properties that make any given plant species unique. Furthermore, with respect to many species-specific features, such studies show that we seem to be limited in what we can expect to learn from a model plant such as Arabidopsis.
Gollery
Martin
M
TimeLogic - a Division of Active Motif, Incline Village, NV 89451, USA.
Harper
Jeff
J
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, MS200, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA.
Cushman
John
J
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, MS200, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA.
Mittler
Taliah
T
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, MS200, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA.
Mittler
Ron
R
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, MS200, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA; Department of Plant Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Givat Ram, Jerusalem 91904, Israel. Electronic address: ronm@unr.edu.
D020816:Amino Acid Motifs; D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics*; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D018745:Genome, Plant; D016366:Open Reading Frames; D012275:Oryza / Q000235:genetics*; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D013045:Species Specificity
D010940:Plant Proteins