Cloning and bioinformatics analysis of an atypical hydrophobic late embryogenesis abundant protein

The full-length cDNA of a LEA-like protein gene from Oryza sativa L. was isolated. The bioinformatics analysis demonstrated the gene belonged to the atypical LEA group 5C and contained a 456 bp ORF encoding a putative polypeptide of 151 amino acids with a calculated molecular mass of 16.5 kDa and a theoretical pI of 5.07, which was named OsLEA5C. OsLEA5C has Leu as the most abundant amino acid followed by Ser and Asp. OsLEA5C protein contains a Pfam:LEA_2 domain architecture at position 44 to 140 with 9 β-sheet domains and 2 α-helical domains. In silico predictions showed OsLEA5C protein was strongly hydrophobic with the grand average of hydropathy value of 0.020 and instability index of 23.54. The three hydrophobic regions are found in the conserved motif of OsLEA5C. OsLEA5C shared extensive homology with other members of atypical group 5C, which sequence identity was 50-62%. The phylogenetic relationship between related group 5 LEA proteins from different plants was analysed.