Computational identification of putative cytochrome P450 genes in soybean (Glycine max) using expressed sequence tags (ESTs)

Cytochrome P450 is a group of monooxygenase that exists as a gene superfamily and plays an important role in metabolizing physiologically important compounds in plants.However, to date only a limited number of P450s have been identified and characterized in soybean (Glycine max.).In this work, a computational study of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) of soybean was performed by data mining methods and bio-informatics tools and as a result 78 putative P450 genes were identified, including 57 new ones.These genes were classified into five clans and 20 families by sequence similarities and among those 57 new families, 18 new subfamilies were found which have not been observed previously in soybean.This work may provide a basis for further functional dissection of P450 genes in soybean and other legumes.