Gene Structure and Phylogenetic Analysis of Cytohesin Family

Cytohesin family has been thought to participate in inside-outside signaling linking growth factor receptor stimulation of PI 3-kinase to cell adhesion and stimulate nucleotide exchange of ARF through its Sec7 domain. The genomic structure of the cytohesin family was analyzed by BLAST search using cDNA and genomic DNA sequences from the GeneBank database. The cytohesin-2 was encoded by 12 exons. while the cytohesin-4 was encoded by 13 exons. The Sec7 and PH domains were not encoded by separate exons. In an analysis of retroviral integration, those two families did not contain any retroviral elements in introns or exons. The phylogenetic tree calculated by the neighbor-joining method suggests that the cytohesin-1 family was closely related to cytohesin-3 (ARNO3) family. These date could be of great use in further studies for resolving the exact function and evolution of the cytohesin family.