Figure 2.

Phylogenetic tree showing relationships between INVINH and PMEI homologs from rice and Sorghum; protein sequences for ZM-INVINH1, ZM-INVINH2, ZM-INVINH3, and experimentally characterized PMEIs and INVINH from wheat, potato, tomato, and Arabidopsis are also included for comparison. The tree was produced in MEGA5.2 [25] using the Neighbor-Joining method [26]. MUSCLE [27] was used for multiple sequence alignment. The bootstrap consensus tree was inferred from 500 replicates [28]. Evolutionary distances were computed using the Poisson correction method [29]. All ambiguous positions were removed for each sequence pair. Highlighted sequences are encoded by genes expressed in endosperm during early caryopsis development.