[Nucleotide sequence of the barley C-hordein gene]

Abstract

The nucleotide sequence of barley C-hordein gene lambda CH4 and its flanking regions of 2820 bp length was determined. The gene contains no introns and codes for 310 amino acid long polypeptide. The 94% of the deduced amino acid sequence of the mature protein (291 amino acids) is made up of a repeating octapeptide motiff, PQQPEPQQ, which is repeated throughout the peptide chain between a unique 12 amino acid long NH2 terminal and a unique 6 amino acid long COOH-terminal end. In the 5' non-coding region there are TATA-, AGGA-, CAAT-and "endosperm" boxes. The 3' non-coding region has two polyadenylation signals. Compared with the published C-hordein sequences, our gene contains a number of insertions, deletions and substitutions. In the 3'-untranslated region there are two insertions 157 and 23 bp long. For the longer insertion no significant homology was found in the Gene Bank datebase. This insertion is the largest known rearrangement in the otherwise highly conservative surroundings of barley storage protein genes.