Applied Bioinformatics Course

PPF - Sequence analysis of Pisum sativum post-floral specific gene

In 1997, a Pisum sativum post-floral-specific gene (PPF-1) was identified (Zhu et al) from a cDNA library of short-day (SD) grown G2 pea tissue. The amino acid sequence encoded by PPF-1 shares similarity with the Bacillus subtilis gene SP3J (Swiss-Prot Accession: ), which is required for maintaining vegetative growth. BLAST search hits with the query sequence of PPF-1 protein contains several bacterial inner membrane proteins which demonstrate hydrophobic regions in sequences. This suggests that PPF-1 protein may also have with transmembrane helices and locate in the membrane of chloroplast of pea leaves. We use PPF-1 as a sample to learn how to use bioinformatics tools to analyze both nucleotide and protein sequence to obtain some information of this gene.