PREDICTION OF AN RIBOSOMAL-RNA METHYLTRANSFERASE DOMAIN IN HUMAN TUMOR-SPECIFIC NUCLEOLAR PROTEIN P120

Using computer methods for identification of amino acid motifs in sequence databases and multiple alignment, it is shown that human proliferation-associated nucleolar protein P120 contains a putative methyltransferase domain that is conserved in a group of bacterial proteins. It is hypothesized that P120 and the related prokaryotic proteins are rRNA methylases required for division of all types of cells.