Identification of Pat1a and Pat1b proteins. (A) Unrooted phylogenetic tree of Pat1 family proteins was assembled using ClustalW (http://workbench.sdsc.edu/). The abbreviations and accession numbers are as follows: Sc: S. cerevisiae (NP_010002), Sp: Schizosaccharomyces pombe (NP_595976), Ce: Caenorhabditis elegans (NP_496514), Dm: Drosophila melanogaster (NP_650592), Bt: Bos taurus Pat1a (XM_868851), B. taurus Pat1b (XP_877785), Cf: Canis familiaris Pat1a (XP_851448), C. familiaris Pat1b (XP_877785), Hs: Homo sapiens Pat1a (NP_001138584), H. sapiens Pat1b (NP_689929), Mm, Mus musculus Pat1a (AAI45647), M. musculus Pat1b (AAH58941), Rn: Rattus norvengicus Pat1a (EDL80016), R. norvengicus Pat1b (NP_001101990), Dr: Danio renio Pat1a (XP_683261), D. renio Pat1b (NP_001076497), Xl: Xenopus laevis Pat1a (NP_001085311), X. laevis Pat1b (AAH98995), Xt: Xenopus tropicalis Pat1a (NP_001135679), X. tropicalis Pat1b (Xt7.1-TTbA027g22.3.5, which is derived from assembled scaffolds of the Gurdon Institute X. tropicalis full-length database). Light gray circle denotes vertebrate Pat1a proteins, dark gray circle vertebrate Pat1b, and white circle invertebrates and yeast. (B) Similarity plot of the alignment of eight pairs of vertebrate Pat1 proteins using the Align X module of Vector NTI (Invitrogen) showing the five delineated regions of xPat1 proteins, where the height of the peak indicates degree of similarity. The asterisk in region III indicates the conserved helix called “helix x.” (C) Schematic representation of X. laevis Pat1a and Pat1b protein regions (not to scale). The identity (ID) and similarity (sim) scores between xPat1a and xPat1b are also indicated (calculated with the Ebi, EMBOSS pairwise alignment tool).
