COMPUTATIONAL ANALYSES AND ANNOTATIONS OF THE ARABIDOPSIS PEROXIDASE GENE FAMILY

Classical heme-containing plant peroxidases have been ascribed a wide variety of functional roles related to development, defense, lignifica tion, and hormonal signaling. More than 40 peroxidase genes are now kn own in Arabidopsis thaliana for which functional association is compli cated by a general lack of peroxidase substrate specificity, Computati onal analysis was performed on 30 near full-length Arabidopsis peroxid ase cDNAs for annotation of start codons and signal peptide cleavage s ites. A compositional analysis revealed that 23 of the 30 peroxidase c DNAs have 5' untranslated regions containing 40-71% adenine, a rare fe ature observed also in cDNAs which predominantly encode stress-induced proteins, and which may indicate translational regulation. (C) 1998 F ederation of European Biochemical Societies.