A conserved extraordinarily long serine homopolymer in Dictyostelid amoebae.

ABSTRACT: Eukaryotic protein sequences often contain amino-acid homopolymers that consist of a single amino acid repeated from several to dozens of times. Some of these are functional but others may persist largely because of high expansion rates due to DNA slippage. However, very long homopolymers with over a hundred repeats are very rare. We report an extraordinarily long homopolymer consisting of 306 tandem serine repeats from the single-celled eukaryote Dictyostelium discoideum, which also has a multicellular stage. The gene has a paralog with 132 repeats and orthologs, also with high serine repeat numbers, in various other Dictyostelid species. The conserved gene structure and protein sequences suggest that the homopolymer is functional. The high codon diversity and very poor alignment of serin

SUBMITTER: Tian X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3907108 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature