Bioinformatic analysis of the protein phosphatase complements of the Arabidopsis, rice, and maize genomes

초록

Protein kinases and protein phosphatases constitute about 2–4% of the genes in a typical eukaryotic genome. Recently, protein phosphatases have emerged as important players in many cellular processes such as proliferation, differentiation, cell adhesion, and motility. Now, protein phosphatases are amongst the extensively studied proteins and are reported as potential drug targets of many diseases, including cancer and others. Recent studies have revealed unique plant-specific structural and functional properties of protein phosphatases in plants. In this study, we searched, identified, and analyzed the protein phosphatase complements of the Arabidopsis, rice, and maize genomes. We report the identification of at least 142 putative protein phosphatases in Arabidopsis, 118 in rice, and 102 in maize. We then classified these proteins into various groups and families on the basis of the catalytic protein phosphatase domains present on them and performed phylogenetic analyses. We found at least one novel PP2C in Arabidopsis. We modeled three-dimensional structures of the Arabidopsis, rice, and maize phosphatase catalytic domains and validated the structures. We aligned the structures of the Arabidopsis, rice, and maize PP2A catalytic domains and classified them according to their structural similarities. Additionally, we analyzed the expression profiles of each Arabidopsis phosphatase genes in the MPSS databases.