The Dispanins: A Novel Gene Family of Ancient Origin That Contains 14 Human Members

The Interferon induced transmembrane proteins (IFITM) are a family of transmembrane proteins that is known to inhibit cell invasion of viruses such as HIV-1 and influenza. We show that the IFITM genes are a subfamily in a larger family of transmembrane (TM) proteins that we call Dispanins, which refers to a common 2TM structure. We mined the Dispanins in 36 eukaryotic species, covering all major eukaryotic groups, and investigated their evolutionary history using Bayesian and maximum likelihood approaches to infer a phylogenetic tree. We identified ten human genes that together with the known IFITM genes form the Dispanin family. We show that the Dispanins first emerged in eukaryotes in a common ancestor of choanoflagellates and metazoa, and that the family later expanded in vertebrates where it forms four subfamilies (A–D). Interestingly, we also find that the family is found in several different phyla of bacteria and propose that it was horizontally transferred to eukaryotes from bacteria in the common ancestor of choanoflagellates and metazoa. The bacterial and eukaryotic sequences have a considerably conserved protein structure. In conclusion, we introduce a novel family, the Dispanins, together with a nomenclature based on the evolutionary origin

Organization of Bio-Molecules in Bulk and Over the Nano-Substrate: Perspective to the Molecular Dynamics Simulations

The properties of bio-molecules are explicitly influenced by their organization in bulk and vicinity of substrate. Organization of bio-molecules can be of various kinds such as folded, unfolded, helix, swollen, globule, and so forth. These organizations of bio-molecule also depend on the local surrounding environmental conditions like temperature, solvency, adsorption, and encapsulation. Variation in environmental conditions helps to manipulate and control the organizations for the desired applications. Adsorption and encapsulation of bio-molecule over substrate have many applications in the area of drug delivery, design and development of bio-sensors, advance bio-separation process, etc. Molecular dynamics simulation is a very powerful tool to investigate the molecular structures, synthesis process and optimum properties, etc. A large number of efficient force field parameters and molecular dynamics simulators are available for large-scale simulation