The agglutinin-like sequence () family is studied because of its contribution to cell adhesion, fungal colonization, and polymicrobial biofilm formation. The goal of this work was to derive an accurate census and sequence for genes in pathogenic yeasts and other closely related species, while probing the boundaries of the family within the Order Saccharomycetales. Bioinformatic methods were combined with laboratory experimentation to characterize 47 novel loci from 8 fungal species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe agglutinin-like sequence () gene family encodes cell-surface adhesins that interact with host and abiotic surfaces, promoting colonization by opportunistic fungal pathogens such as . Studies of Als protein contribution to adhesion would benefit from an accurate catalog of gene sequences as well as insight into relative gene expression levels. Even in the genomics era, this information has been elusive: genome assemblies are often broken within genes because of their extensive regions of highly conserved, repeated DNA sequences and because there are many similar genes at different chromosomal locations.
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