We report here the isolation and characterizations of three somatic
embryogenesis receptor kinase (PhSERK) genes from palm date by a rapid
amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) approach. PhSERKs belong to a small family
of receptor kinase genes, share a conserved structure and extensive sequence
homology with previously reported plant SERK genes. Sequence analysis of
these genes revealed the sequence size of 11051 pb (PhSERK1), 7981 pb
(PhSERK2) and 10510 pb (PhSERK3). The open reading frames of PhSERK1,
PhSERK2 and PhSERK3 are 1914 pb, 1797 pb and 1719 pb respectively. PhSERKs
belongs to the LRR-type cell surface RLKs, which possess a number of
characteristic domains. These include an extracellular domain (EX)
containing a variable number of LRR units, signal pepetide (SP) immediately
followed by a single transmembrane domain (TM) and an intracellular kinase
domain. The phylogenetic tree shows that the protein PhSERK1, PhSERK2 and
PhSERK3 clustered within monocots SERKs proteins groups. We also predicted
the secondary and tertiary with ligand binding sites structure of the
protein PhSERKs.
The Arabidopsis Somatic Embryogenesis Receptor Kinase 1 Gene Is Expressed in Developing Ovules and Embryos and Enhances Embryogenic Competence in Culture