DDB_G0279459 - dictyBase/community-annotations GitHub Wiki

DDB G0279459 contains a forkhead-associated domain which is similar to the corresponding domain in the KI-67 antigen, a very widely used clinical proliferation marker, and is the only hit when the KI-67 sequence is blasted against Dicty proteins. Direct comparison of the Dd sequence with KI-67 by Blast2Sequences identifies two regions of homology and gives an expected value of 4e-08, suggesting that the similarity may be real. The KI-67 antigen in humans is nuclear and present throughout the cell cycle in proliferating cells, but undetectable in cells in G0. Recent work suggests that the protein is involved in ribosomal RNA synthesis Bullwinkel et al, J Cell Physiology 206 (2006); Rahmanzadeh et al, Cell Proliferation 40 (2007). A role in chromatin compaction has also been ascribed to KI-67 Kametaka et al, Genes Cells 7 (2002) but this appears to involve the C-terminus. The Dicty protein is significantly shorter than the human protein and the homologies appear confined to the N-terminus.

DDB G0279459 is 13-fold overexpressed in a Dicty strain missing the retinoblastoma-like gene rblA (the p-value for the null hypothesis is too small to calculate). Most of the genes overexpressed in this strain are associated with cell cycle progression. DDB G0279459 also shows a developmental trajectory (high between T8 and T16, low otherwise) typical for cell-cycle associated genes, see DictyExpress). DDB_G0279459 thus appears to be associated with proliferation in Dicty, as KI-67 is in metazoans.

Harry MacWilliams, March 2010

---

return to DDB_G0279459 Gene Page