Ssu72 Discussion

Function

In attempting to infer the function of the Drosophila Ssu72 protein, two broad sources of information were used, each leading to competing conclusions which may or may not be incompatible. The first, which is predicated on the broad similarity in amino acid sequence that was found to exist between this protein and the human Ssu72 protein, is in vivo and in vitro experimental evidence about the latter protein, which tends to suggest that the protein in Drosophila also functions as a serine phosphatase, presumably at the C-terminal domain of RNA polymerase II ( ), and has a role in 3' end mRNA processing that is independent of its activity as a phosphatase. The second piece of guidance comes from the results generated by computational analyses and use of bioinformatic tools in this paper, which prima facie reveal the Drosophila protein to be a protein tyrosine phosphatase. Therefore, these two seemingly conflicting conclusions must now be evaluated on the basis of the limited evidence available.

Structure

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Abstract | Introduction | Results | Discussion | Method | References