Mimivirus reveals Mre11/Rad50 fusion proteins with a sporadic distribution in eukaryotes, bacteria, viruses and plasmids.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The Mre11/Rad50 complex and the homologous SbcD/SbcC complex in bacteria play crucial roles in the metabolism of DNA double-strand breaks, including DNA repair, genome replication, homologous recombination and non-homologous end-joining in cellular life forms and viruses. Here we investigated the amino acid sequence of the Mimivirus R555 gene product, originally annotated as a Rad50 homolog, and later shown to have close homologs in marine microbial metagenomes.

Results

Our bioinformatics analysis revealed that R555 protein sequence is constituted from the fusion of an N-terminal Mre11-like domain with a C-terminal Rad50-like domain. A systematic database search revealed twelve additional cases of Mre11/Rad50 (or SbcD/SbcC) fusions in a wide variety of unrelated o

SUBMITTER: Yoshida T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3175470 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature