Summary: TAT (twin-arginine translocation) pathway signal sequence
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TAT (twin-arginine translocation) pathway signal sequence Provide feedback
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Internal database links
|Similarity to PfamA using HHSearch:||UCR_Fe-S_N FAD-SLDH|
This tab holds annotation information from the InterPro database.
InterPro entry IPR019546
The twin-arginine translocation (Tat) pathway serves the role of transporting folded proteins across energy-transducing membranes [PUBMED:16322447]. Homologues of the genes that encode the transport apparatus occur in archaea, bacteria, chloroplasts, and plant mitochondria [PUBMED:12029389]. In bacteria, the Tat pathway catalyses the export of proteins from the cytoplasm across the inner/cytoplasmic membrane. In chloroplasts, the Tat components are found in the thylakoid membrane and direct the import of proteins from the stroma. The Tat pathway acts separately from the general secretory (Sec) pathway, which transports proteins in an unfolded state [PUBMED:16092521].
It is generally accepted that the primary role of the Tat system is to translocate fully folded proteins across membranes. An example of proteins that need to be exported in their 3D conformation are redox proteins that have acquired complex multi-atom cofactors in the bacterial cytoplasm (or the chloroplast stroma or mitochondrial matrix). They include hydrogenases, formate dehydrogenases, nitrate reductases, trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) reductases and dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO) reductases [PUBMED:16756481, PUBMED:15546663]. The Tat system can also export whole heteroligomeric complexes in which some proteins have no Tat signal. This is the case of the DMSO reductase or formate dehydrogenase complexes. But there are also other cases where the physiological rationale for targeting a protein to the Tat signal is less obvious. Indeed, there are examples of homologous proteins that are in some cases targeted to the Tat pathway and in other cases to the Sec apparatus. Some examples are: copper nitrite reductases, flavin domains of flavocytochrome c and N-acetylmuramoyl-L-alanine amidases [PUBMED:15802249].
In halophilic archaea such as Halobacterium almost all secreted proteins appear to be Tat targeted. It has been proposed to be a response to the difficulties these organisms would otherwise face in successfully folding proteins extracellularly at high ionic strength [PUBMED:12427925].
The Tat signal peptide consists of three motifs: the positively charged N-terminal motif, the hydrophobic region and the C-terminal region that generally ends with a consensus short motif (A-x-A) specifying cleavage by signal peptidase. Sequence analysis revealed that signal peptides capable of targeting the Tat protein contain the consensus sequence [ST]-R-R-x-F-L-K. The nearly invariant twin-arginine gave rise to the pathway's name. In addition the h-region of Tat signal peptides is typically less hydrophobic than that of Sec-specific signal peptides [PUBMED:16756481, PUBMED:15546663].
Below is a listing of the unique domain organisations or architectures in which this domain is found. More...
The graphic that is shown by default represents the longest sequence with a given architecture. Each row contains the following information:
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a textual description of the architecture, e.g. Gla, EGF x 2, Trypsin.
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This motif is found in a wide range of secreted proteins. It is named after the conserved pair of arginines that is followed by a hydrophobic stretch.
The clan contains the following 3 members:CytB6-F_Fe-S TAT_signal UCR_Fe-S_N
We store a range of different sequence alignments for families. As well as the seed alignment from which the family is built, we provide the full alignment, generated by searching the sequence database (reference proteomes) using the family HMM. We also generate alignments using four representative proteomes (RP) sets, the UniProtKB sequence database, the NCBI sequence database, and our metagenomics sequence database. More...
There are various ways to view or download the sequence alignments that we store. We provide several sequence viewers and a plain-text Stockholm-format file for download.
We make a range of alignments for each Pfam-A family:
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- the alignment generated by searching the sequence database using the HMM
- Representative Proteomes (RPs) at 15%, 35%, 55% and 75% co-membership thresholds
- alignment generated by searching the UniProtKB sequence database using the family HMM
- alignment generated by searching the NCBI sequence database using the family HMM
- alignment generated by searching the metagenomics sequence database using the family HMM
You can see the alignments as HTML or in three different sequence viewers:
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You may find that large alignments cause problems for the viewers and the reformatting tool, so we also provide all alignments in Stockholm format. You can download either the plain text alignment, or a gzipped version of it.
We make a range of alignments for each Pfam-A family. You can see a description of each above. You can view these alignments in various ways but please note that some types of alignment are never generated while others may not be available for all families, most commonly because the alignments are too large to handle.
1Cannot generate PP/Heatmap alignments for seeds; no PP data available
Key: available, not generated, — not available.
Format an alignment
We make all of our alignments available in Stockholm format. You can download them here as raw, plain text files or as gzip-compressed files.
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This page displays the phylogenetic tree for this family's seed alignment. 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 alignment.
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Curation and family details
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|Seed source:||Bateman A|
|Number in seed:||501|
|Number in full:||1407|
|Average length of the domain:||25.70 aa|
|Average identity of full alignment:||35 %|
|Average coverage of the sequence by the domain:||5.45 %|
|HMM build commands:||
build method: hmmbuild -o /dev/null HMM SEED
search method: hmmsearch -Z 17690987 -E 1000 --cpu 4 HMM pfamseq
|Family (HMM) version:||7|
|Download:||download the raw HMM for this family|
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This visualisation provides a simple graphical representation of the distribution of this family across species. You can find the original interactive tree in the More....
This chart is a modified "sunburst" visualisation of the species tree for this family. It shows each node in the tree as a separate arc, arranged radially with the superkingdoms at the centre and the species arrayed around the outermost ring.
How the sunburst is generated
The tree is built by considering the taxonomic lineage of each sequence that has a match to this family. For each node in the resulting tree, we draw an arc in the sunburst. The radius of the arc, its distance from the root node at the centre of the sunburst, shows the taxonomic level ("superkingdom", "kingdom", etc). The length of the arc represents either the number of sequences represented at a given level, or the number of species that are found beneath the node in the tree. The weighting scheme can be changed using the sunburst controls.
In order to reduce the complexity of the representation, we reduce the number of taxonomic levels that we show. We consider only the following eight major taxonomic levels:
Colouring and labels
Segments of the tree are coloured approximately according to their superkingdom. For example, archeal branches are coloured with shades of orange, eukaryotes in shades of purple, etc. The colour assignments are shown under the sunburst controls. Where space allows, the name of the taxonomic level will be written on the arc itself.
As you move your mouse across the sunburst, the current node will be highlighted. In the top section of the controls panel we show a summary of the lineage of the currently highlighed node. If you pause over an arc, a tooltip will be shown, giving the name of the taxonomic level in the title and a summary of the number of sequences and species below that node in the tree.
Anomalies in the taxonomy tree
There are some situations that the sunburst tree cannot easily handle and for which we have work-arounds in place.
Missing taxonomic levels
Some species in the taxonomic tree may not have one or more of the main eight levels that we display. For example, Bos taurus is not assigned an order in the NCBI taxonomic tree. In such cases we mark the omitted level with, for example, "No order", in both the tooltip and the lineage summary.
Unmapped species names
The tree is built by looking at each sequence in the full alignment for the family. We take the name of the species given by UniProt and try to map that to the full taxonomic tree from NCBI. In some cases, the name chosen by UniProt does not map to any node in the NCBI tree, perhaps because the chosen name is listed as a synonym or a misspelling in the NCBI taxonomy.
So that these nodes are not simply omitted from the sunburst tree, we group them together in a separate branch (or segment of the sunburst tree). Since we cannot determine the lineage for these unmapped species, we show all levels between the superkingdom and the species as "uncategorised".
Since we reduce the species tree to only the eight main taxonomic levels, sequences that are mapped to the sub-species level in the tree would not normally be shown. Rather than leave out these species, we map them instead to their parent species. So, for example, for sequences belonging to one of the Vibrio cholerae sub-species in the NCBI taxonomy, we show them instead as belonging to the species Vibrio cholerae.
Too many species/sequences
For large species trees, you may see blank regions in the outer layers of the sunburst. These occur when there are large numbers of arcs to be drawn in a small space. If an arc is less than approximately one pixel wide, it will not be drawn and the space will be left blank. You may still be able to get some information about the species in that region by moving your mouse across the area, but since each arc will be very small, it will be difficult to accurately locate a particular species.
The tree shows the occurrence of this domain across different species. More...
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.
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.
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