TY - JOUR AU - Bujnicki, Janusz M. PY - 2002 DA - 2002/03/12 TI - Sequence permutations in the molecular evolution of DNA methyltransferases JO - BMC Evolutionary Biology SP - 3 VL - 2 IS - 1 AB - DNA methyltransferases (MTases), unlike MTases acting on other substrates, exhibit sequence permutation. Based on the sequential order of the cofactor-binding subdomain, the catalytic subdomain, and the target recognition domain (TRD), several classes of permutants have been proposed. The majority of known DNA MTases fall into the α, β, and γ classes. There is only one member of the ζ class known and no members of the δ and ε classes have been identified to date. Two mechanisms of permutation have been proposed: one involving gene duplication and in-frame fusion, and the other involving inter- and intragenic shuffling of gene segments. SN - 1471-2148 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-2-3 DO - 10.1186/1471-2148-2-3 ID - Bujnicki2002 ER -