Plants employ various defence strategies to ameliorate the effects of heavy metal exposures, leading to re-establishment of metal homeostasis. One of the strategies includes the biosynthesis of main heavy metal detoxifying peptides phytochelatins (PCs) by phytochelatin synthase (PCS). In the present study, 14 PCS homologues were identified in the genomes of 10 selected plants. The size of these PCSs was 452-545 amino acid residues, with characteristic phytochelatin and phytochelatin_C domains. The N-terminal site of the proteins is highly conserved, whereas the C-terminal site is less conserve ...Daha fazlası