Genome-wide identification and comparative analysis of coiled-coil proteins

The α -helical coiled-coil is a protein structure motif well suited for computational prediction. To study the occurrence of coiled-coil proteins throughout different kingdoms, we have computationally identified and clustered long coiled-coil proteins from 23 fully-sequenced genomes. Our results indicate that long coiled-coil proteins occur with higher frequency in eukaryotes than prokaryotes, with kingdom-specific families observed in plants and animals. We have established searchable protein databases containing prediction data for Arabidopsis , rice and Chlamydomonas coiled-coil proteins to facilitate further studies.