Bioinformatics
Anahita Panji; Ahmad Ismaili; Seyyed Mohsen Sohrabi
Abstract
Antimicrobial peptides are a part of the innate immune system in plants. They are present in all tissues and a wide range of plant species, and their antimicrobial effect against plant and animal pathogens and cancer cells has been proven. Snakins are a group of low molecular weight cysteine-rich plant ...
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Antimicrobial peptides are a part of the innate immune system in plants. They are present in all tissues and a wide range of plant species, and their antimicrobial effect against plant and animal pathogens and cancer cells has been proven. Snakins are a group of low molecular weight cysteine-rich plant antimicrobial peptides involved in the defense against biotic and abiotic stresses, hormone pathways, and plant growth and development. In the present study, laboratory and bioinformatic methods were used to investigate the characteristics of the snakin gene family members and to evaluate their expression changes in four seed development stages (3, 8, 13, and 18 days after pollination) in barley plants. The results showed the presence of 11 snakin genes in the genome of barley. The protein sequences of the identified snakins contained the GASA functional domain. These snakins had a signal peptide and had extracellular accumulation. Due to their high abundance of hydrophobic amino acids, they were hydrophobic and produced complex secondary structures. Phylogenetic analysis was performed between barley, rice, and arabidopsis snakins as two monocot and dicot models, leading to three classes. Also, six disulfide bonds and antimicrobial properties were computationally confirmed in all identified proteins. Expression analysis showed different expression patterns for snakin gene family members in different stages of seed development and also exhibited different trends in each stage. The snakin genes can use to produce transgenic plants and to produce a new generation of natural antibiotic agents to protect humans, plants, and animals.
Bioinformatics
Mohsen Hosseini; Abbas Saidi
Abstract
Intracellular polyamine contents are regulated not only by biosynthesis and transport but also by catabolism through FAD dependent polyamine oxidases (PAOs). The results of various studies on PAO proteins in developmental processes and response to environmental stresses confirm the importance of this ...
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Intracellular polyamine contents are regulated not only by biosynthesis and transport but also by catabolism through FAD dependent polyamine oxidases (PAOs). The results of various studies on PAO proteins in developmental processes and response to environmental stresses confirm the importance of this protein in plant life; however, there is no comprehensive study of phylogenetic and structural relationships of plant PAOs. In the present study, to better understand phylogenetic and structural relationships of PAO proteins, bioinformatics analyses were performed on 58 PAO protein sequences of 15 different plant species. Multiple clusters with gene duplications were identified in both dicot and monocot-species. According to the conserved motifs obtained by MEME and MAST tools, four motifs were similar in most plant species. As there is no structural information available on PAOs, structural analyses were carried out on PAOs from Oryza sativa and Arabidopsis thaliana as representative of monocot and dicot plants, respectively. Secondary structure analysis revealed that alpha helix dominated among secondary structure elements followed by random coils, extended strand and beta turns for all sequences. Tertiary structures were predicted with SWISS-MODEL server. The best templates with high similarity that their structure determined by experimental methods were selected. To our knowledge, this is the first report of phylogenetic and structural relationships of plant PAOs. Our results may provide a theoretical basis for future studies of functional and structural details of plants PAOs.
