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A Bioinformatics Search for Potential High-Fidelity AutophagyAssociated Atg8-Interacting Motifs within Arabidopsis Proteins for Better Understanding of their Function in Plants

Qingjun Xie and Gad Galili

Autophagy is an evolutionary conserved mechanism underlying the degradation of proteins and/or metabolites. Advanced researches have shown that the Autophagy associated gene 8 (Atg8) proteins play key regulatory roles in the operation of the autophagy system. In general, proteins that are associated autophagy tend to bind to Atg8 through the presence of functional Atg8-interacting motifs (AIMs) within their protein sequences. To date, numerous AIMs have been identified from multiple proteins derived from multiple organisms. However, little is known about the evolutionary fate of the AIMs present in these proteins. Here, we show and discuss the correlation between the amount of AIMs and the size of proteins that contain AIMs, which may shed new lights on the correlation between protein size and the potential participation of autophagy in the homeostasis of these proteins.