Skip Navigation


Bioinformatics Advance Access originally published online on October 10, 2006
Bioinformatics 2006 22(23):2841-2845; doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btl498
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (Print PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Supplementary Data
Right arrowOA All Versions of this Article:
22/23/2841    most recent
btl498v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (5)
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Birtle, Z.
Right arrow Articles by Ponting, C. P.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Birtle, Z.
Right arrow Articles by Ponting, C. P.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© 2006 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Meisetz and the birth of the KRAB motif

Zoë Birtle and Chris P. Ponting *

Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, MRC Functional Genetics Unit, University of Oxford South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QX, UK

*To whom correspondence should be addressed.

The largest family of transcription factors in mammals is of Cys2His2 zinc finger-proteins, each with an NH2-terminal KRAB motif. Extensive expansions of this family have occurred in separate mammalian lineages, with ~400 such genes known in the human genome. Despite their widespread occurrence, the evolutionary provenance of the KRAB motif is unclear since previously it has not been found outside of the tetrapod vertebrates. Here, we show that homologues of the histone methyltransferase Meisetz are present within the sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) genome. Sea urchin and mammalian Meisetz sequences each contain an N-terminal KRAB motif, which thereby establishes an early origin of the KRAB motif prior to the divergence of echinoderm and chordate lineages. Finally, we present evidence that KRAB motifs derive from a novel family of KRI (KRAB Interior) motifs that were present in the last common ancestor of animals, plants and fungi.

Contact: chris.ponting{at}anat.ox.ac.uk

Supplementary information: Supplementary data for this article are available at Bioinformatics online.

Received on August 8, 2006; revised on September 26, 2006; accepted on September 27, 2006

Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Mol Biol EvolHome page
H.-R. Chung, U. Lohr, and H. Jackle
Lineage-specific expansion of the Zinc Finger Associated Domain ZAD
Mol. Biol. Evol., September 1, 2007; 24(9): 1934 - 1943.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 Nucleic Acids ResHome page
R. I. Sadreyev, M. Tang, B.-H. Kim, and N. V. Grishin
COMPASS server for remote homology inference
Nucleic Acids Res., July 13, 2007; 35(suppl_2): W653 - W658.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 Genome Res.Home page
L. Goodstadt, A. Heger, C. Webber, and C. P. Ponting
An analysis of the gene complement of a marsupial, Monodelphis domestica: Evolution of lineage-specific genes and giant chromosomes
Genome Res., July 1, 2007; 17(7): 969 - 981.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.