Pea Polyubiquitin Genes: (I) Structure and Genomic Organization

Four polyubiquitin genes, PUB1, PUB2, PUB3 and PUB4, were isolated from a pea (Pisum sativum L. cv Alaska) genomic library and completely sequenced. They represent all of the four polyubiquitin genes of the ubiquitin gene family in pea. The coding regions of the genes contain five or six coding units arranged as tandem repeats. The different coding repeats of the four genes share homologies between 75 and 97%, encoding the same protein of 76 amino acids identical to those from other higher plants. The open reading frames of PUB1, PUB2 and PUB4 terminate in the additional amino acid, phenylalanine (F), and PUB3 terminates in isoleucine (I). The polyubiquitin genes all contain intron sequences ranging from 584 to 1114 bp immediately 5' to the ATG initiation codon of the first coding sequence. Of the four genes, three are associated with long AT-rich (85.4-89.4% A+T) sequences ranging from about 331 to 478 bp at their 5' or 3' ends. The PUB4 gene was found to be linked to a moderate to highly repetitive DNA at its 5' flanking sequence. The greater sequence homology between different genes than among individual repeating units of a gene suggests that the polyubiquitin genes may have arisen by gene duplication of a single gene sequence.