Identification of novel homologues of three low molecular weight subunits of the mitochondrial bc₁ complex

authored by

Hans Peter Braun

Abstract

Large scale random cDNA sequencing projects have been started for several organisms and are a valuable tool for the analysis of quantitative and qualitative aspects of gene expression. However, the reliability of the obtained data is limited as most of the clerics are only partially analysed on one strand. As a consequence the sequence entries derived from random cDNA sequencing projects usually comprise incomplete open reading frames. They nevertheless define complete and reliable coding sequences, if two prerequisites are fullfilled: (i) the clones encode very small proteins, and (ii) the clones have a high frequency in the cDNA-banks. The present study describes the use of cDNA databases for the identification of homologues of three low molecular-weight subunits of the mitochondrial bc₁ complex, termed the QCR6, QCR9 and QCR10 proteins. These polypeptides are only characterized for a small number of organisms, have it scarcely defined function and exhibit a low degree of structural conservation if compared between different species. Several clones were identified for each polypeptide by searches with TBLASTN using the known sequences as probes. Most of the database curries contain complete open reading frames and sequencing queries could be excluded due to the abundancy of the chines. Multiple sequence alignments are presented for all three polypeptides and consensus sequences are given which may provide a basis for the investigation of the proteins by site-directed mutagenesis.

Organisation(s)

Section Plant Molecular Biology and Plant Proteomics

Type

Article

Journal

Molecular biology reports

Volume

23

Pages

71-77

No. of pages

7

ISSN

0301-4851

Publication date

1996

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Molecular Biology, Genetics

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00424432 (Access: Unknown)