title: Small heat shock proteins, phylogeny in filamentous fungi and expression analyses in Aspergillus nidulans.
abstract: Small heat shock proteins (sHSPs) have been characterized in organisms from all three domains of life and viruses and are involved in a wide range of biological functions. However, the evolution and function of sHSP in Aspergillus species are largely unknown. In the present work, sHSPs were identified in 31 filamentous fungi, including species from Aspergillus, Penicillium, Fusarium and Magnaporthe, as well as Botrytis cinerea and Neurospora crassa. Phylogenetic analysis revealed high level of divergence of sHSPs among filamentous fungi that orthologs could be only found between very closely related species. Strikingly, duplication of shsp genes occurred in genera Penicillium and also Aspergillus nidulans was observed, which might be an important pathway of sHSPs evolution. Expression analysis of shsp genes revealed that sHSPs were involved in response of A. nidulans to various conditions, including cold/heat as well as oxidative and osmotic stresses, and that the recent duplicated sHSPs in A. nidulans had highly similar function.
authors.affiliation: College of Life and Environmental Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou 310036, China.
authors.forename: Jianbing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biotechnology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
authors.forename: Mingshuang
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: College of Life and Environmental Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou 310036, China.
authors.forename: Liting
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: College of Life and Environmental Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou 310036, China. Electronic address: yudl@hznu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Dongliang
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Yu
mesh_terms: D001233:Aspergillus nidulans / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D005656:Fungal Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D020440:Gene Duplication; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling / Q000379:methods*; D015966:Gene Expression Regulation, Fungal; D050888:Heat-Shock Proteins, Small / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D005810:Multigene Family; D010802:Phylogeny; D013312:Stress, Physiological
chemical_list: D005656:Fungal Proteins; D050888:Heat-Shock Proteins, Small
keywords: Gene duplication; Heat shock protein; Orthologs; Stress response