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Cyclic Nucleotide Signaling in Plants pp 195–205Cite as

Computational Identification of Candidate Nucleotide Cyclases in Higher Plants

Part of the Methods in Molecular Biology book series (MIMB,volume 1016)

Abstract

In higher plants guanylyl cyclases (GCs) and adenylyl cyclases (ACs) cannot be identified using BLAST homology searches based on annotated cyclic nucleotide cyclases (CNCs) of prokaryotes, lower eukaryotes, or animals. The reason is that CNCs are often part of complex multifunctional proteins with different domain organizations and biological functions that are not conserved in higher plants. For this reason, we have developed CNC search strategies based on functionally conserved amino acids in the catalytic center of annotated and/or experimentally confirmed CNCs. Here we detail this method which has led to the identification of >25 novel candidate CNCs in Arabidopsis thaliana, several of which have been experimentally confirmed in vitro and in vivo. We foresee that the application of this method can be used to identify many more members of the growing family of CNCs in higher plants.

Key words

  • Cyclic nucleotide cyclase
  • Adenylyl cyclase
  • cAMP
  • Guanylyl cyclase
  • cGMP
  • Catalytic center
  • Motif search
  • Homology modeling
  • Basic local alignment search tool
  • Arabidopsis thaliana

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  • DOI: 10.1007/978-1-62703-441-8_13
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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Chemical and Life Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

    Aloysius Wong & Chris Gehring

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  1. Aloysius Wong
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  2. Chris Gehring
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Division of Chemical and Life Sciences a, 4700 King Abdullah University of Science, N/A, Thuwal, 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia

    Chris Gehring

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Wong, A., Gehring, C. (2013). Computational Identification of Candidate Nucleotide Cyclases in Higher Plants. In: Gehring, C. (eds) Cyclic Nucleotide Signaling in Plants. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1016. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-441-8_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-62703-441-8_13

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  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-62703-440-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-62703-441-8

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