Summary

Pumilio-family RNA binding repeat

Puf repeats (aka PUM-HD, Pumilio homology domain) are necessary and sufficient for sequence specific RNA binding in fly Pumilio and worm FBF-1 and FBF-2. Both proteins function as translational repressors in early embryonic development by binding sequences in the 3' UTR of target mRNAs (e.g. the nanos response element (NRE) in fly Hunchback mRNA, or the point mutation element (PME) in worm fem-3 mRNA). Other proteins that contain Puf domains are also plausible RNA binding proteins. P47135 for instance, appears to also contain a single RRM domain by HMM analysis. Puf domains usually occur as a tandem repeat of 8 domains. The Pfam model does not necessarily recognise all 8 repeats in all sequences; some sequences appear to have 5 or 6 repeats on initial analysis, but further analysis suggests the presence of additional divergent repeats. Structures of PUF repeat proteins show they consist of a two helix structure [3,4].

Literature references

Zhang B, Gallegos M, Puoti A, Durkin E, Fields S, Kimble J, Wickens MP. , Nature 1997;390:477-484.: A conserved RNA-binding protein that regulates sexual fates in the C. elegans hermaphrodite germ line. PUBMED:9393998
Zamore PD, Williamson JR, Lehmann R. , RNA 1997;3:1421-1433.: The Pumilio protein binds RNA through a conserved domain that defines a new class of RNA-binding proteins. PUBMED:9404893
Edwards TA, Pyle SE, Wharton RP, Aggarwal AK; , Cell 2001;105:281-289.: Structure of Pumilio reveals similarity between RNA and peptide binding motifs. PUBMED:11336677
Wang X, Zamore PD, Hall TM; , Mol Cell 2001;7:855-865.: Crystal structure of a Pumilio homology domain. PUBMED:11336708

InterPro entry IPR001313

The drosophila pumilio gene codes for an unusual protein that binds through the Puf domain that usually occurs as a tandem repeat of eight domains. The FBF-2 protein of Caenorhabditis elegans also has a Puf domain. Both proteins function as translational repressors in early embryonic development by binding sequences in the 3' UTR of target mRNAs PUBMED:9393998, PUBMED:9404893. The same type of repetitive domain has been found in in a number of other proteins from all eukaryotic kingdoms. The Puf proteins characterised to date have been reported to bind to 3'-untranslated region (UTR) sequences encompassing a so-called UGUR tetranucleotide motif and thereby to repress gene expression by affecting mRNA translation or stability.

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Baker's yeast), five proteins, termed Puf1p to Puf5p, bear six to eight Puf repeats PUBMED:15024427. Puf3p binds nearly exclusively to cytoplasmic mRNAs that encode mitochondrial proteins; Puf1p and Puf2p interact preferentially with mRNAs encoding membrane-associated proteins; Puf4p preferentially binds mRNAs encoding nucleolar ribosomal RNA-processing factors; and Puf5p is associated with mRNAs encoding chromatin modifiers and components of the spindle pole body. This suggests the existence of an extensive network of RNA-protein interactions that coordinate the post-transcriptional fate of large sets of cytotopically and functionally related RNAs through each stage of its lifecycle.

Clan

This family is a member of clan TPR (CL0020), which contains the following 67 members:

Adaptin_N Arm Avirulence BTAD ChAPs CLASP_N Clathrin Clathrin-link Clathrin_propel Coatomer_E Cohesin_load CRM1_C Cse1 DNA_alkylation Drf_FH3 Drf_GBD DUF2225 DUF634 DUF654 FAT GUN4 HAT HEAT HEAT_PBS HemY_N IBB IBN_N IFRD IML2 KAP Leuk-A4-hydro_C LRV LRV_FeS MA3 MIF4G MIF4G_like MIF4G_like_2 Mo25 Neurochondrin NSF Paf67 ParcG PC_rep PHAT PI3Ka PPR Proteasom_PSMB PUF Rapsyn_N RPN7 Sel1 SHNi-TPR SPO22 ST7 Suf SusD TOM20_plant TPR_1 TPR_2 TPR_3 TPR_4 Upf2 V-ATPase_H_C V-ATPase_H_N Vps39_1 W2 Xpo1

Gene Ontology

Molecular function

RNA binding (GO:0003723)

External database links

PANDIT:	PF00806
SCOP:	1m8z
SYSTERS:	PUF

Domain organisation

Below is a listing of the unique domain organisations or architectures in which this domain is found. More...

Loading domain graphics...

Alignments

There are various ways to view or download the sequence alignments that we store. You can use a sequence viewer to look at either the seed or full alignment for the family, or you can look at a plain text version of the sequence in a variety of different formats. More...

View options

Alignment:	Seed (50) Full (3230) NCBI (3752) Metagenomics (24)
Viewer:

Formatting options

Alignment:	Seed (50) Full (3230)
Format:
Order:	Tree Alphabetical
Sequence:	Inserts lower case All upper case
Gaps:
Download/view:	Download View

Download options

Very large alignments can often cause problems for the formatting tool above. If you find that downloading or viewing a large alignment is problematic, you can also download a gzip-compressed, Stockholm-format file containing the seed or full alignment for this family.

You can also download a FASTA format file containing the full-length sequences for all sequences in the full alignment.

The main seed and full alignments are generated using sequences from the UniProt sequence database. However, we also generate alignments using sequences from the NCBI sequence database and the "metaseq" metagenomics dataset.

You can view alignments from these two additional datasets using the form above, or you can download alignments of NCBI or metagenomics sequences, as gzip-compressed files.

Pfam alignments:	Seed (50) Full (3230) NCBI (3752) Metagenomics (24)
Full length sequences	Full-sequences (3230)

External links

MyHits provides a collection of tools to handle multiple sequence alignments. For example, one can refine a seed alignment (sequence addition or removal, re-alignment or manual edition) and then search databases for remote homologs using HMMER2.

HMM logo

HMM logos is one way of visualising profile HMMs. Logos provide a quick overview of the properties of an HMM in a graphical form. You can see a more detailed description of HMM logos and find out how you can interpret them here. More...

Trees

This page displays the phylogenetic tree for this family. We use FastTree to calculate neighbour join trees with a local bootstrap based on 100 resamples (shown next to the tree nodes). FastTree calculates approximately-maximum-likelihood phylogenetic trees from our seed or full alignments.

Note: You can also download the data files for the seed, full, NCBI or metagenomics trees.

Curation and family details

This section shows the detailed information about the Pfam family. You can see the definitions of many of the terms in this section in the glossary and a fuller explanation of the scoring system that we use in the scores section of the help pages.

Curation

Seed source:

[1]

Previous IDs:

none

Type:

Repeat

Author:

Eddy SR

Number in seed:

50

Number in full:

3230

Average length of the domain:

33.70 aa

Average identity of full alignment:

24 %

Average coverage of the sequence by the domain:

4.18 %

HMM information

HMM build commands:

build method: hmmbuild -o /dev/null HMM SEED

search method: hmmsearch -Z 9421015 -E 1000 HMM pfamseq

Model details:

Parameter	Sequence	Domain
Gathering cut-off	21.2	18.6
Trusted cut-off	21.2	18.6
Noise cut-off	21.0	18.5

Model length:

35

Family (HMM) version:

12

Download:

download the raw HMM for this family

Species distribution

Tree controls

Hide

The tree shows the occurrence of this domain across different species. More...

Species trees

We show the species tree in one of two ways. For smaller trees we try to show an interactive representation, which allows you to select specific nodes in the tree and view them as an alignment or as a set of Pfam domain graphics.

Unfortunately we have found that there are problems viewing the interactive tree when the it becomes larger than a certain limit. Furthermore, we have found that Internet Explorer can become unresponsive when viewing some trees, regardless of their size. We therefore show a text representation of the species tree when the size is above a certain limit or if you are using Internet Explorer to view the site.

If you are using IE you can still load the interactive tree by clicking the "Generate interactive tree" button, but please be aware of the potential problems that the interactive species tree can cause.

Interactive tree

For all of the domain matches in a full alignment, we count the number that are found on all sequences in the alignment. This total is shown in the purple box.

We also count the number of unique sequences on which each domain is found, which is shown in green. Note that a domain may appear multiple times on the same sequence, leading to the difference between these two numbers.

Finally, we group sequences from the same organism according to the NCBI code that is assigned by UniProt, allowing us to count the number of distinct sequences on which the domain is found. This value is shown in the pink boxes.

We use the NCBI species tree to group organisms according to their taxonomy and this forms the structure of the displayed tree. Note that in some cases the trees are too large (have too many nodes) to allow us to build an interactive tree, but in most cases you can still view the tree in a plain text, non-interactive representation. Those species which are represented in the seed alignment for this domain are highlighted.

You can use the tree controls to manipulate how the interactive tree is displayed:

show/hide the summary boxes
highlight species that are represented in the seed alignment
expand/collapse the tree or expand it to a given depth
select a sub-tree or a set of species within the tree and view them graphically or as an alignment
save a plain text representation of the tree

Loading...

Interactions

There is 1 interaction for this family. More...

PUF

Structures

For those sequences which have a structure in the Protein DataBank, we use the mapping between UniProt, PDB and Pfam coordinate systems from the MSD group, to allow us to map Pfam domains onto UniProt sequences and three-dimensional protein structures. The table below shows the structures on which the PUF domain has been found.

Loading structure mapping...

Family: PUF (PF00806)

Jump to...