*4.2. Sequence Alignment, Phylogenetic Analysis, Chromosomal Location, and Gene Structure Construction*

The protein theoretical molecular weight and isoelectric point were predicted using compute pI/MW (http://au.expasy.org/tools). Multiple alignments of the nucleotide and amino acid sequences were performed using ClustalW [51]. The phylogenetic analysis was constructed based on the sequences of MAPK proteins from *Arabidopsis*, *V. vinifera*, and kiwifruit using a neighbor-joining (NJ) method with 1000 bootstrap replicates and visualized with MEGA5 software [52]. The chromosomal distribution of all *AcMAPK* genes was determined based on the results of identification, and subsequently the location images of *AcMAPK* genes were drawn with MapInspect software (http://www.softsea.com/review/MapInspect.html). The exon/intron structure analysis of the *AcMAPK* genes was conducted and displayed by comparing CDSs and their corresponding gene sequences from genomic using the Gene Structure Display Serve [53]. The MEME program was used to statistically identify conserved motifs in the complete amino acid sequences of AcMAPK proteins [43].
