*2.1. Identification and Annotation of Apple SAP Genes*

To identify the genes in the apple genome that encode SAP proteins, we conducted a BlastP of the apple genome database and identified 32 putative family members. We then used the Pfam and NCBI Conserved Domain Database (NCBI-CDD) databases for verification, searching for the A20/AN1 domain in the amino acid sequences encoded by all 32 genes. From this, we confirmed the identity of 30 typical apple SAP genes in the original dataset (Table 1).

We next cloned all of the full-length apple SAP genes based on predicted nucleotide sequences in the apple genome and in the NCBI nucleotide database. As shown in Table 1, this revealed that the full-length cDNAs of *MdSAP7*, -*8*, -*10*, -*12*, -*14*, -*15*, -*16*, -*19*, -*21*, -*23*, -*25*, -*28*, and -*29* had been isolated and confirmed by RT-PCR (Supplementary Sequence A1). Their corresponding 50 - and 30 -UTRs were then amplified.
