Phylogenetic analysis of receptor-like kinases from rice

Plant receptor-like kinases (RLKs) have been shown to be critical components in plant cellular processes. To provide a valid basis to evaluate the evolutionary relationships among RLKs from Arabidopsis and rice, a genome-wide search for RLKs-related sequences was conducted. By doing BLASTP through the database of rice (Oryza sativa L. subsp. indica) genome at Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), we identified 267 putative RLK genes. All RLKs were classified into different structural groups based on their extracellular structures. The phylogenetic analysis of RLKs in rice and Arabidopsis showed that the different groups of RLKs had different characteristics of sequence conservation and of evolutionary relationship. The multisequences alignment of rice RLKs and Arabidopsis Brassinosteroid-insensitive 1 (BRI1) suggested that the putative autophosphorylation sites of rice RLKs were dissimilar to those in BRI1.