Functional and evolutionary implications of enhanced genomic analysis of rhomboid intramembrane proteases.

ABSTRACT: Rhomboids are a recently discovered family of widely distributed intramembrane serine proteases. They have diverse biological functions, including the regulation of growth factor signaling, mitochondrial fusion, and parasite invasion. Despite their existence in all branches of life, the sequence identity between rhomboids is low. We have combined BLAST-based database mining with functional and structural data to generate a comprehensive genomic analysis of eukaryotic rhomboid-like proteins. We show that robust membrane topology models are necessary to classify active rhomboid proteases unambiguously, and we define rules for distinguishing predicted active proteases from the larger evolutionary group of rhomboid-like proteins. This leads to a revision of estimates of numbers of proteolytica

SUBMITTER: Lemberg MK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2045146 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature