Eukaryotic protein kinases in the rat genome: Identification and comparative studies

초록

Protein kinases, in coordination with protein phosphatases, play crucial roles in regulation of signaling pathways. To identify protein kinases in the rat genome, publicly accessible genetic sequence databases were searched. These searches yielded a catalog of 555 protein kinases and 45 protein kinase pseudogenes. At least 509 human protein kinases have rat orthologs, confirming rat as a model system for studying human protein kinases. Rat has almost all protein kinases as orthologous pairs that present in the mouse genome. Two hundred and seventy nine rat protein kinases contain 128 functional domains other than kinase domain and 268 rat protein kinases have a nuclear localization signal. Finally, a user-friendly web-based resource that consolidates the gene and protein annotations for all human, mouse and rat protein kinases has been developed.