Ubiquitin ligases play a central role in determining the specificity of the ubiquitination system by selecting a myriad of appropriate candidate proteins for modification.The U-box is a recently identified,ubiquitin ligase activityrelated protein domain that shows greater presence in plants than in other organisms.In this study,we identified 77 putative U-box proteins from the rice genome using a battery of whole genome analysis algorithms.Most of the U-box protein genes are expressed,as supported by the identification of their corresponding expressed sequence tags (ESTs),full-length cDNAs,or massively parallel signature sequencing(MPSS)tags.Using the same algorithms,we identified 61 U-box proteins from the Arabidopsis genome.The rice and Arabidopsis U-box proteins were classified into nine major classes based on their domain compositions.Comparison between rice and Arabidopsis U-box proteins indicates that the majority of rice and Arabidopsis U-box proteins have the same domain organizations.The inferred phylogeny established the homology between rice and Arabidopsis U-box/ARM proteins.Cell death assay using the rice protoplast system suggests that one rice U-box gene,OsPU851,might act as a negative regulator of cell death signaling.In addition,the selected U-box proteins were found to be functional E3 ubiquitin ligases.The identification and analysis of rice U-box proteins hereby at the genomic level will help functionally characterize this class of E3 ubiquitin ligase in the future.