Title

Authors

Affiliation

Department of Bioinformatics, School of Biotechnology and Health Sciences, Karunya University, Coimbatore -641114, Tamil Nadu, India

Email

sureshbio@gmail.com; *Corresponding author

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

Received August 13, 2011; Accepted August 13, 2011; Published August 20, 2011

GAGA factor (GAF) is involved in both gene activation and gene repression and plays a role in the modulation of chromatin structure. In Drosophila, Trithroax like (Trl) gene encodes the DNA binding protein called GAGA factor (GAF). Trl-GAF binds to GAGA sites through its C2H2 zinc finger domain and has an N-terminal BTB/POZ domain. Identification of Trl-GAF homologue in mouse helps in deeper understanding of the mechanism and function. Conventional alignment tools such as BLAST and FASTA cannot identify homologues in mouse genome as their sequence identity is below 30%. In the present study, various sequence and structure analyses were followed for the detection of remote homologues of Drosophila GAGA FACTOR in mouse to identify as Zbtb3. Through homology modeling and docking approach, the zinc finger region of mouse Zbtb3 showed conserved residues and favorable DNA binding sites with GAGA sites similar to that of Drosophila GAGA FACTOR.

Keywords

Remote homologue, GAGA factor, BTB, Zinc finger, Zbtb3, molecular modeling

Citation

Kumar. Bioinformation 7(1): 29-32 (2011)
 

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.