The Arabidopsis B-Box Zinc Finger Family.

摘要

The Arabidopsis thaliana genome encodes >1500 transcription factors, and 45% of these belong to families specific to plants (Riechmann et al., 2000). Comparison of the entire complement of transcription factors of Arabidopsis, Drosophila melanogaster, Caenorhabditis elegans, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae revealed that families common to all eukaryotes are conserved only in the sequence and structure of the domains defining the respective families and that each eukaryotic lineage has diversified greatly to create novel proteins regulating lineage-specific processes (Riechmann et al., 2000). The zinc finger family of proteins is an example of such diversification and it consists of a large number of proteins that are further classified into distinct subfamilies (see SMART, http://smart.embl-heidelberg.de/smart/show_motifs.pl). The Zn finger domains form multiple finger-like protrusions that can bind metals like zinc.