Figure 3

Two different types of leucine zippers are associated with the homeodomain (HD) in START proteins from plants. (a) Alignment of a region from 16 Arabidopsis proteins illustrating the carboxy-terminal end of the HD adjacent to a ZLZ motif. The leucine zipper region contains three repeats, separated by a loop of around 10-20 amino acids, and followed by another three repeats. Consistent with the hypothesis of α helix formation, no helix-disrupting proline or glycine residues are present in these heptad repeats. The loop region is partially conserved and contains a pair of invariant cysteine residues (CXXC) (gray shading) with a propensity for disulfide linkage predicted to stabilize the structure. (b) Alignment of the basic region leucine zipper (BRLZ) (SMART) and basic-leucine zipper (bZIP) (Pfam), against a similar region in five Arabidopsis proteins. The leucine zipper region contains five repeats preceded by a basic region and the tail end of the HD. The leucines (yellow) and 'a' and 'd' positions of the leucine zippers are marked in both alignments.