R&D CENTER

Genome-Wide Identification from Ascomycota Fungal Genomes and Classification of GATA Transcription Factors

Mangi Kim, Hong Xi, and Jongsun Park*
URL  
GATA transcription factors (TFs) are widespread eukaryotic regulators whose DNA-binding domain is a class IV zinc finger motif (CX2CX17-20CX2C) followed by a basic region. With 349 Ascomycota fungal genomes belonging to 159 genera, we successfully identified 2,437 GATA genes (2,486 GATA TFs) to understand phylogenomic position of Ascomycota fungal GATA TFs. Number of GATA genes in 349 fungal genomes ranges from 2 to 22 and proportion against whole genes is from 0.017\% to 0.224\%. In only 8 genomes, some GATA genes contain alternative splicing forms, presenting uncommon alternative splicing events in Ascomycota. Based on previous research of fungal GATA TFs, we found some different number of GATA TFs of fungal species, such as Aspergillus oryzae, Fusarium graminearum, and Neurospora crassa. Until now, at least 35 research papers have been revealed biological function of GATA genes, so that combined regulatory networks of GATA genes based on these references were reconstructed. In genus level, 30 genera belonging to 7 classes were selected for further analyses, presenting classification based on fungal characteristics. Bioinformatic pipeline to maintain fungal GATA TFs efficiently has been constructed with the aid of Fungal Genome Database (http://fungalgenome.info/). The results of this study and the pipeline can be a guide for classifying fungal GATA TFs, which can be utilized for understanding its biological roles as well as for inspiring evolutionary history of GATA TFs in fungal kingdom.