Deep vertebrate roots for mammalian zinc finger transcription factor subfamilies.

ABSTRACT: While many vertebrate transcription factor (TF) families are conserved, the C2H2 zinc finger (ZNF) family stands out as a notable exception. In particular, novel ZNF gene types have arisen, duplicated, and diverged independently throughout evolution to yield many lineage-specific TF genes. This evolutionary dynamic not only raises many intriguing questions but also severely complicates identification of those ZNF genes that remain functionally conserved. To address this problem, we searched for vertebrate "DNA binding orthologs" by mining ZNF loci from eight sequenced genomes and then aligning the patterns of DNA-binding amino acids, or "fingerprints," extracted from the encoded ZNF motifs. Using this approach, we found hundreds of lineage-specific genes in each species and also hundreds o

SUBMITTER: Liu H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3971581 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature