Draft: Lab 2 Discussion

Although the FGENESH predicted 15 exons, the missing portion that was output by Phytozome suggests that there may be 16 exons. The Nucleotide BLAST matches to only eukaryotic green plants suggests that this gene plays a role in plant development that is not present in animals. Based on the UniProt description of the gene as involved in the cell membrane, the gene seems to be involved in the membrane and cell wall, which is only present in plants. This was also supported by the fact that only the kinase domain was conserved in species outside of plants. The whole of almost whole protein was only found in plants.

I hypothesize that the unknown gene codes for a transmembrane protein spanning the plasma membrane or cell wall of B. distachyon cells. The extracellular leucine-rich repeats are used to communicate with surrounding cells, activating the intracellular kinase domain to bind ATP and phosphorylate a protein