title: Molecular phylogenetics of ascomycotal adhesins--a novel family of putative cell-surface adhesive proteins in fission yeasts.
abstract: In this work, we identify a family of putative adhesins in the fission yeasts Schizosaccharomyces pombe and Schizosaccharomyces japonicus. The members of this family share a conserved tandem repeat related to those found in the Candida albicans Als family of adhesins. Unlike previously characterised adhesins that possess conserved ligand-binding domains at the N-terminus, this group of proteins carry ligand-binding domains at their C-termini. We demonstrate that one such domain--the uncharacterised GLEYA domain, is related to the lectin-like ligand-binding domain found in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Flo proteins. Unlike the Flo and Als proteins, the fission yeast adhesins do not contain detectable glycosyl phosphatidyl inositol (GPI) membrane anchor signals to mediate their attachment to the cell wall, which may suggest a novel cell wall attachment mechanism. Further sequence analysis identified several putative adhesins in the sub-phylum of Pezizomycotina, where only a few adhesins have been described to date.
authors.affiliation: Division of Metabolic Diseases, Karolinska Institutet, Novum, SE-141 86 Stockholm, Sweden. tomas.linder@ki.se
authors.forename: Tomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Linder
authors.forename: Claes M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Gustafsson
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001203:Ascomycota / Q000235:genetics*; D001665:Binding Sites; D015815:Cell Adhesion Molecules / Q000235:genetics*; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D005656:Fungal Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D008565:Membrane Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D021382:Protein Sorting Signals; D029701:Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D012568:Schizosaccharomyces / Q000235:genetics*; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D020080:Tandem Repeat Sequences
chemical_list: C109455:ALA1 protein, Candida albicans; D015815:Cell Adhesion Molecules; D005656:Fungal Proteins; D008565:Membrane Proteins; D021382:Protein Sorting Signals; D029701:Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins