Evolution of protein-protein interaction networks for plant bZIP transcription factors

摘要

BackgroundThe basic leucine zipper (bZIP) protein family is one of the largest dimerizing transcription factor families,found in all eukaryotes. Its name was derived from the highly conserved basic region (BR) and the leucine zipper (LZ) domains, which are responsible for DNA binding and dimerization, respectively [1].By dimerization, a small number of monomers may combine into a very large number of dimers, with unique functions. The goal is to identify the major phases of expansion of the family and the evolution of dimerization of bZIPs in plants.Data & MethodsHMMs based on the BR and the whole bZIP domains were used to scan various plant and unicellular eukaryotic genomes; the identified sequences were aligned with Muscle and their phylogeny was built with PhyML; MEME was used to detect conserved motifs in the various bZIP proteins, in order to increase the confidence of the phylogeny [2].