Passarinho Paul A, de Vries Sacco C
Arabidopsis Book. 2002;1:e0023. doi: 10.1199/tab.0023. Epub 2002 Sep 30.
Plant chitinases (EC 3.2.1.14) belong to relatively large gene families subdivided in classes that suggest class-specific functions. They are commonly induced upon the attack of pathogens and by various sources of stress, which led to associating them with plant defense in general. However, it is becoming apparent that most of them display several functions during the plant life cycle, including taking part in developmental processes such as pollination and embryo development. The number of chitinases combined with their multiple functions has been an obstacle to a better understanding of their role in plants. It is therefore important to identify and inventory all chitinase genes of a plant species to be able to dissect their function and understand the relations between the different classes. Complete sequencing of the Arabidopsis genome has made this task feasible and we present here a survey of all putative chitinase-encoding genes accompanied by a detailed analysis of their sequence. Based on their characteristics and on studies on other plant chitinases, we propose an overview of their possible functions as well as modified annotations for some of them.
植物几丁质酶（EC 3.2.1.14）属于相对较大的基因家族，这些家族可细分为不同类别，这些类别暗示了特定类别的功能。它们通常在病原体攻击和各种胁迫源作用下被诱导产生，这使得它们总体上与植物防御相关联。然而，越来越明显的是，它们中的大多数在植物生命周期中发挥多种功能，包括参与授粉和胚胎发育等发育过程。几丁质酶的数量及其多种功能一直是更好地理解它们在植物中作用的障碍。因此，识别和清点一种植物物种的所有几丁质酶基因，以便能够剖析它们的功能并理解不同类别之间的关系非常重要。拟南芥基因组的全序列测定使这项任务变得可行，我们在此展示了对所有推定的几丁质酶编码基因的调查，并对其序列进行了详细分析。基于它们的特征以及对其他植物几丁质酶的研究，我们概述了它们可能的功能，并对其中一些进行了修正注释。
