Bioinformatic analysis of VPE family in higher plants

In this study,we used the sequence of the Peptidase_C13 domain identified from the vacuolar processing enzyme(VPE)genes in plants as queries to search for VPE genes in both Arabidopsis thaliana and Oryza sativa L.genomes.A phylogenetic tree was then constructed based on the corresponding VPE proteins from Arabidopsis and rice,and the conserved sequences,signal peptides,and subcellular localization of these proteins were analyzed.The results showed that:1)Eight and thirteen VPE from Arabidopsis thaliana and O.sativa,respectively,were identified based on the characteristic domains and the result of alignment analysis.Two and eleven of them from Arabidopsis thaliana and rice,respectively,were reported for the first time.2)The polygenetic analysis of these sequences indicated that the main character for VPE genes might have existed before the split of Arabidopsis thaliana and rice.3)The Peptidase_C13 domain was highly conserved among these proteins based on the sequence alignment analysis.4)The subcellular localization analysis indicated that different VPEs were localized in different positions in cell,but most VPEs were localized in vacuolar.