Tomato contains homologues of Arabidopsis cryptochromes 1 and 2

Cryptochromes are blue light photoreceptors found in both plants and animal s. They probably evolved from photolyases, which are blue/UV-light-absorbin g photoreceptors involved in DNA repair. In seed plants, two different cryp tochrome (CRY) genes have been found in Arabidopsis and one in Sinapis, whi le three genes have been found in the fern Adiantum. We report the characte risation of tomato CRY genes CRY1 and CRY2. They map to chromosomes 4 and 9 , respectively, show relatively constitutive expression and encode proteins of 679 and 635 amino acids, respectively. These proteins show higher simil arity to their Arabidopsis counterparts than to each other, suggesting that duplication between CRY1 and CRY2 is an ancient event in the evolution of seed plants. The seed plant cryptochromes form a group distinct from the fe rn cryptochromes, implying that only one gene was present in the common anc estor between these two groups of plants. Most intron positions in CRY gene s from plants and ferns are highly conserved. Tomato cry1 and cry2 proteins carry C-terminal domains 210 and 160 amino acids long, respectively. Sever al conserved motifs are found in these domains, some of which are common to both types of cryptochromes, while others are cryptochrome-type-specific.