R. Tavares et al., Organization and structural evolution of four multigene families in Arabidopsis thaliana: AtLCAD, AtLGT, AtMYST and AtHD-GL2, PLANT MOL B, 42(5), 2000, pp. 703-717
The Arabidopsis Genome Initiative has released up to now more than 80% of t
he genome sequence of Arabidopsis thaliana. About 70% of the identified gen
es have at least one paralogue. In order to understand the biological funct
ion of individual genes, it is essential to study the structure, expression
and organization of the entire multigene family. A systematic analysis of
multigene families, made possible by the amount of genomic sequence data av
ailable, provides important clues for the understanding of genome evolution
and plasticity. In this paper, four multigene families of A. thaliana are
characterized, namely LCAD, HD-GL2, LGT and MYST. Members of HD-GL2 and LCA
D have already been reported in plants. The LGT genes specify proteins cont
aining motifs of glycosyl transferase. No plant genes similar to the LGT ge
nes have been reported to date. The novel MYST family, most likely plant-sp
ecific, encodes proteins with no identified function. Sequencing and in sil
ico analysis led to the characterization of 29 novel genes belonging to the
se four gene families. The organization, structure and evolution of all the
members of the four families are discussed, as well as their chromosome lo
cation. Expression data of some of the paralogues of each family are also p
resented.