Identification of Microbial Rhodopsin Genes from Salt Lake in Inner Mongolia

摘要

Microbial rhodopsins are photoactive proteins that use retinal molecule as the photoactive center. Because of the structural simplicity and functional diversity, microbial rhodopsins have been an excellent model system for structural biology. In the past decades microbial rhodopisns were identified from diverse environments including salt lakes, fresh water, sea water, human and plant tissues as fungal pathogens. In the present work, we tried to identify microbial rhodopsin genes from salt lake in Inner Mongolia, China. Two bacteriorhodopsin-like genes were identified. The retrieved sequences were analyzed by comparing with four most widely studied haloarchaeal rhodopsins.