Abstract
Selenoproteins are a type of protein which contain in their sequence the selenocystein aminoacid, known as the twenty-first aminoacid. Selenocystein is encoded by UGA codon, which is almost always interpreted as a STOP codon, which present difficulties for anotation by bioinformatics tools. Organisms which have selenoproteins have to recode the UGA codon to introduce a selenocystein. The recodification of the UGA codon is carried out by a tridimensional structure called SECIS, which is placed in the 3'UTR region of the selenoproteins genes.
In this research work, analysis has been carried out on 14 recently sequenced protist genomes to check the presence or absence of the TR and Lmsel1 selenoprotein family. To do this analysis, bioinformatic tools such as tBLASTn, Exonerate, GeneWise, T_coffee, SECISearch and tRNAscan-SE have been used. In addition, our analysis has been extended to include the search for the machinery involved in the synthesis of selenoproteins, which is also found in the genomes.
The results obtained reveal the presence of TR selenoproteins in the genomes of F.cylindrus and P.capsici and also the presence of homologous proteins with glycine in the genomes of G.niphandrodes and S.arctica . On the other hand, the presence of Lmsel1 selenoprotein has only been found in the genome of L.donovani
.