Ssu72 Introduction

The Ssu72 RNA polymerase II CTD phosphatase homolog is a protein from Drosophila melanogaster that shares a high level of sequence similarity with the human Ssu72 protein - the function of which has been characterised to some degree in the literature and a number of putative homologs identified across a broad range of species. While there are fewer than 10 papers in PubMed that reference the human protein, it is useful to give at least a cursory examination of some of that information at this point to provide context for a discussion of the speculative function of the drosophila protein; particularly given that it shares a 60.21% sequence identity with the human Ssu72 protein, and that there are no gaps in the alignment produced after running a BLAST (See figure 1). This preliminary sequence alignment is suggestive that, on the face of it, there may be, at the least, a broad similarity in function that can be inferred from the human protein by virtue of Ssu72's strong conservation across evolution.

On a reading of the literature, which is more thoroughly considered in the 'function' section of the discussion, it is clear that the human Ssu72 protein functions as a protein phosphatase in vivo.

Abstract | Introduction | Results | Discussion | Method | References