Figure 8. Sequence alignments of aminopeptidase family members.

Potential homologues of mouse APN (P97449) were identified by a NCBI blastp search. Peptide sequences were aligned using COBALT (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/tools/cobalt/cobalt.cgi?CMD=Web). Highly conserved regions are boxed. In the consensus sequence row, X is any amino acid and B is bulky side chain neutral amino acids. The full-length aligned sequence from E. coli LAP (not shown) was used as the basis for the homology modelling of mouse APN. The three conserved residues in the binding domains of murine APN selected for site-directed mutagenesis are indicated with a vertical line above them, a fourth mutated residue, Tyr⁴⁷⁶, is not shown. AAP1, alanine/arginine aminopeptidase 1; LTA4, leukotriene A-4 hydrolase.