Conserved repeats in diverged ice nucleation structural genes from two species of Pseudomonas

Sequence analysis shows that an ice nucleation gene (inaW) from Pseudomonas fluorescens is related to the inaZ gene of Pseudomonas syringae. The two genes have diverged by many amino acid substitutions, and have effectively randomized the third bases of homologous codons. By reference to their potential for change, it is shown that certain conserved features must have been maintained by selection pressure. In particular, their conservation of internal sequence repetition, with three orders of repeat periodicity in each gene, suggests that the pattern of repetition is significant to the gene products' function. We propose models for the structure of the gene products in which each order of periodicity would be required for the nucleation function.