<p>This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.</p> <p>As a result of genome, EST and cDNA sequencing projects, there are huge numbers of
predicted and/or partially characterised protein sequences compared with a relatively small
number of proteins with experimentally determined function and structure. Thus, there is a
considerable attention focused on the accurate prediction of gene function and structure
from sequence by using bioinformatics. In the course of our analysis of genomic sequence
from <italic>Fugu rubripes</italic>, we identified a novel gene, <italic>SAND</italic>, with significant sequence identity to
hypothetical proteins predicted in <italic>Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Schizosaccharomyces pombe,
Caenorhabditis elegans</italic>, a <italic>Drosophila melanogaster</italic> gene, and mouse and human cDNAs.
Here we identify a further <italic>SAND</italic> homologue in human and <italic>Arabidopsis thaliana</italic> by use of
standard computational tools. We describe the genomic organisation of <italic>SAND</italic> in these
evolutionarily divergent species and identify sequence homologues from EST database
searches confirming the expression of SAND in over 20 different eukaryotes. We confirm
the expression of two different SAND paralogues in mammals and determine expression of
one SAND in other vertebrates and eukaryotes. Furthermore, we predict structural
properties of SAND, and characterise conserved sequence motifs in this protein family.</p>
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Comp Funct Genomics. 2001 Aug; 2(4):226-235