Figure 1

Comparison of ZmTCRRs to plant type-A response regulators. a, phylogenetic tree based on the protein sequences of type-A response regulators from Arabidopsis thaliana, Oryza sativa and Zea mays. Note that OsRR13 and OsRR13H refer to different sequences named similarly in Ito et al. 2006 and Hirose et al. 2007, respectively. NCBI GI numbers for all sequences are supplied in Table 1. The alignment and distance calculations were performed using the MEGA 3.1 software [64] and the Neighbour-Joining algorithm with 1000 bootstrap iterations. The circle indicates the cluster where both ZmTCRRs are located together with four putative flower specific molecules from rice. b, alignment of ZmTCRRs and rice related proteins. The arrowheads indicate conserved residues forming the active site of response regulators, as indicated in the Conserved Domain Database (CDD) [65]. Conservative changes are shown on a dark background, identical residues on a light grey background. The common c-terminal motif specific for this cluster of proteins is underlined.