Identification of Conserved Domains and Motifs among different types of Polymerases

Abstract: Polymerases are enzymes that catalyze the synthesis of DNA or RNA polymers whose sequence is complementary to the original template. Domains are basic structural, functional and evolutionary components of proteins or polypeptide chains that fold upon themselves. We were interested in finding conserved domain regions in these different polymerases. We did multiple sequence alignments of whole genes. Domains were also identified using SMART database and were used for alignments. Motifs YMDD, GR, SP, DVE, LT are highly conserved motifs, mostly in DNA dependent RNA and RNA dependent DNA polymerases. We also saw a high degree of conservation in the domain sequences derived from SMART databases of Cyanobacterial organisms. We hypothesize that this conservation might be because these genes might have been involved in lateral or horizontal gene transfer.

Keywords: DNA polymerase, Reverse transcriptase, Conserved domains, horizontal gene transfer