TY - JOUR A1 - Tenhaken, Raimund A1 - Doerks, Tobias A1 - Bork, Peer T1 - DCD – a novel plant specific domain in proteins involved in development and programmed cell death T2 - BMC bioinformatics N2 - Background: Recognition of microbial pathogens by plants triggers the hypersensitive reaction, a common form of programmed cell death in plants. These dying cells generate signals that activate the plant immune system and alarm the neighboring cells as well as the whole plant to activate defense responses to limit the spread of the pathogen. The molecular mechanisms behind the hypersensitive reaction are largely unknown except for the recognition process of pathogens. We delineate the NRP-gene in soybean, which is specifically induced during this programmed cell death and contains a novel protein domain, which is commonly found in different plant proteins. Results: The sequence analysis of the protein, encoded by the NRP-gene from soybean, led to the identification of a novel domain, which we named DCD, because it is found in plant proteins involved in d evelopment and c ell d eath. The domain is shared by several proteins in the Arabidopsis and the rice genomes, which otherwise show a different protein architecture. Biological studies indicate a role of these proteins in phytohormone response, embryo development and programmed cell by pathogens or ozone. Conclusion: It is tempting to speculate, that the DCD domain mediates signaling in plant development and programmed cell death and could thus be used to identify interacting proteins to gain further molecular insights into these processes. KW - Salicylic Acid KW - Programme Cell Death KW - Hypersensitive Reaction KW - Cell Death Program KW - Thalassiosira Pseudonana Y1 - 2005 UR - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/4043 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-14464 SN - 1471-2105 N1 - Copyright: © Tenhaken et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2005. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. VL - 6 IS - Art. 169 SP - 1 EP - 6 PB - BioMed Central ; Springer CY - London ; Berlin ; Heidelberg ER -