Identification and comperative genomics of the rat protein kinases

초록

Eukaryotic protein kinases represent one of the largest superfamilies of the eukaryotic proteins which play distinct roles in cell signaling and diseases. We searched the publicly accessible genetic sequence databases for rat protein kinases. Our search identified 515 eukaryotic protein kinases, 40 atypical protein kinases and 45 kinase pseudogenes. The rat has a few more kinases in addition to the orthologous pairs of mouse kinases and 509 kinases are orthologous to human. Two hundred and seventy nine kinases contain 128 functional domains other than kinase domain and 268 kinases have a nuclear localization signal. The protein kinases identified by our search were compared with available public databases. Finally, we developed a comprehensive database named Kinome Portal, which integrates sequences and other related information about human, mouse and rat protein kinases.