title: Putative Arabidopsis homologues of metazoan coiled-coil cytoskeletal proteins.
abstract: The Arabidopsis thaliana genome encodes about 386 proteins with coiled-coil domains of at least 50 amino acids in length. In mammalian systems, many coiled-coil proteins are part of various cytoskeletal networks including intermediate filament protein, actin-binding proteins and MAP (microtubule-associated proteins). Immunological evidence suggests that some of these cytoskeletal proteins, such as lamins, keratins and tropomyosins, may be conserved in Arabidopsis. However, coiled-coil proteins are of low complexity, and thus, traditional sequence comparison algorithms, such as BLAST may not detect homologies. Here, we use the PROPSEARCH algorithm to detect putative coiled-coil cytoskeletal protein homologues in Arabidopsis. This approach reveals putative intermediate filament protein homologues of filensin, lamin and keratin; putative actin-binding homologues of ERM (ezrin/radixin/moesin), periplakin, utrophin, tropomyosin and paramyosin, and putative MAP homologues of restin/CLIP-170 (cytoplasmic linker protein-170). We suggest that the AtFPP (Arabiopsis thaliana filament-like plant protein) and AtMAP70 (Arabidopsis microtubule-associated protein 70) families of coiled-coil proteins may, in fact, be related to lamins and function as intermediate filament proteins.
authors.affiliation: The School of Biological Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. jgardiner@mail.usyd.edu.au
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gardiner
authors.forename: Robyn
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Overall
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Marc
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000737:chemistry*; D003598:Cytoskeletal Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D030562:Databases, Protein; D007381:Intermediate Filament Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D007633:Keratins; D034882:Lamins; D008840:Microfilament Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D008869:Microtubule-Associated Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D017433:Protein Structure, Secondary; D014335:Tropomyosin
chemical_list: D003598:Cytoskeletal Proteins; D007381:Intermediate Filament Proteins; D034882:Lamins; D008840:Microfilament Proteins; D008869:Microtubule-Associated Proteins; D014335:Tropomyosin; D007633:Keratins