Section: New Results

Characterization of STAND protein families

Participants : David James Sherman, Pascal Durrens, Witold Dyrka [correspondant] .

In collaboration with Sven Saupe and Mathieu Paoletti from IBGC Bordeaux (ANR Mykimun), we worked on characterization of the STAND protein family in the fungal phylum. We established an in silico screen based on state-of-the-art bioinformatic tools, which – starting from experimentally studied sequences from Podospora anserina – allowed us to determine the first systematic picture of fungal STAND protein repertoire (ms. in preparation). Most notably, we found evidence of extensive modularity of domain associations, and signs of concerted evolution within the recognition domain. Both results support the hypothesis that fungal STAND proteins, originally described in the context of vegetative incompatibility, are involved in a general fungal immune system. In addition, we investigated improved protein domain representations and elaborated a grammatical modelling method [15] , which will be used to elucidate mechanisms of formation and operation of the STAND proteins.