Abstract: Protein arginine methyltransferases, PRMTs, are one of important epigenetic regulating factors，which are involved in modifying histone arginine methylation, changing chromatin structure and regulating gene expression in eukaryotic genome. In this study, a complete set of 8 PRMT proteins were identified in maize genome. By contrasting with the PRMT protein sequences in Arabidopsis and rice, all 8 ZmPRMT proteins were categorized into three classes based on phylogeny in maize. By using bioinformatics methods and softwares, physical and chemical of amino acid sequence of all maize PRMT proteins were analyzed, and their signal peptide, transmembrane domain, hydrophobic and hydrophilic structure, protein secondary and tertiary structure were also determined in this study. These results revealed a comprehensive overview of the maize PRMT protein family and provided a great significance on subsequent functional research of PRMT proteins in maize.

Key words: maize, histone methylation, PRMT domain