目的:真菌是Opisthokonta动物的亲属,通过致病性等相互作用方式与人类生活密切相关,食物,和次级代谢产物,包括有益的如青霉素和有害的如致癌黄曲霉毒素。和动物一样,真菌也与NF-κB样天鹅绒家族调节因子一起进化。天鹅绒蛋白构成了真菌转录因子的一个大的蛋白质家族,共享一个共同的天鹅绒结构域,并在协调真菌次级代谢中起关键作用。发育和分化过程。我们目前对天鹅绒调节剂的理解主要来自子囊真菌;然而,它们在Ascomycota之外仍然很大程度上是未知的。因此,这项研究对整个真菌王国的天鹅绒蛋白进行了分类学的广泛调查,并对天鹅绒分布进行了详细分析,结构,多样性,和进化。结果提供了真菌王国天鹅绒调节系统的整体视图。
All life forms have evolved to respond appropriately to various environmental and internal cues. In the animal kingdom, the prototypical regulator class of such cellular responses is the Rel homology domain proteins including nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NF-κB). Fungi, the close relatives of animals, have also evolved with their own NF-κB-like regulators called velvet family proteins to govern cellular and chemical development. Here, we conducted a detailed investigation of the taxonomic broad presence of velvet proteins. We observed that velvet proteins are widely distributed in the fungal kingdom. Moreover, we have identified and characterized 21 major velvet clades in fungi. We have further revealed that the highly conserved velvet domain is composed of three distinct motifs and acts as an evolutionarily independent domain, which can be shuffled with various functional domains. Such rearrangements of the velvet domain have resulted in the functional and type diversity of the present velvet regulators. Importantly, our in-deep analyses of the primary and 3D structures of the various velvet domains showed that the fungal velvet domains can be divided into two major clans: the VelB and the VosA clans. The 3D structure comparisons revealed a close similarity of the velvet domain with many other eukaryotic DNA-binding proteins, including those of the Rel, Runt, and signal transducer and activator of transcription families, sharing a common β-sandwich fold. Altogether, this study improves our understanding of velvet regulators in the fungal kingdom.IMPORTANCEFungi are the relatives of animals in Opisthokonta and closely associated with human life by interactive ways such as pathogenicity, food, and secondary metabolites including beneficial ones like penicillin and harmful ones like the carcinogenic aflatoxins. Similar to animals, fungi have also evolved with NF-κB-like velvet family regulators. The velvet proteins constitute a large protein family of fungal transcription factors sharing a common velvet domain and play a key role in coordinating fungal secondary metabolism, developmental and differentiation processes. Our current understanding on velvet regulators is mostly from Ascomycota fungi; however, they remain largely unknown outside Ascomycota. Therefore, this study performed a taxonomic broad investigation of velvet proteins across the fungal kingdom and conducted a detailed analysis on velvet distribution, structure, diversity, and evolution. The results provide a holistic view of velvet regulatory system in the fungal kingdom.