Molecular characterization of the PFMAGO genes in Physalis. (A) Alignment of the PFMAGO cDNA sequences and their deduced proteins products. The coding regions are shown in upper case, whereas UTR sequences in lower case. The differences in the coding regions of the 2 genes are indicated in bold italics. The arrows indicate the putative transcription initiation sites. The initiator ATGs are boxed and the first base set as position 1. Differences in amino acid residues encoded by the major ORFs are shown in bold, whereas amino acid identities are shown as dots for PFMAGO2. The sequences of the in-frame sORFs in the 5′UTR and the major ORFs are depicted in upper case, whereas the out-frame sORFs are in lower case. The stop codons are boxed. A putative polyadenylation signal in the 3′UTR of PFMAGO1 is shown in bold and underlined. The filled triangles indicate the positions of the functional polyA sites. The empty triangles indicate intron positions. (B) Comparison of MAGO NASHI sequences from different species. The variable region at the N-terminus of MAGO NASHI is boxed. Sequence differences are underlined. The arrows indicate intron positions in plant MAGO NASHI genes. The sequences shown here are PFMAGO1 and PFMAGO2 from Physalis floridana, which were isolated in this study, At1g02140 from Arabidopsis thaliana, ABA97757 from Oryza sativa, AAW78461 from Physcomitrella patens, NP_476636 from Drosophila melanogaster, CAB03239 from Caenorhabditis elegans, AAH10905 from Homo sapiens, and AK008200 from Mus musculus. (C) Structures of selected plant MAGO NASHI genes. PFMAGO1 and PFMAGO2 from P. floridana were isolated in this study. The Arabidopsis homolog At1g02140 and the rice homolog DP00001 were included for comparison. The open boxes indicate the exons and the black lines represent the promoters, introns, and UTRs. The first nucleotide of ATG was set as 1.