Fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) constitute a large family of signaling molecules found in eukaryotes from nematodes to humans. Expression patterns and knockout studies of the vertebrate FGFs suggest that these molecules have an important role in development, wound repair and some cancers. To date, the only viral genomes known to encode FGFs belong to those members of the Baculoviridae isolated from Lepidoptera, but the function of the baculovirus FGFs is unknown. Genomic analysis of the Lepidopteran nucleopolyhedroviruses reveals that they each contain one FGF gene, whereas the granuloviruses code for two or three FGFs, each with different structure. Molecular phylogenies of the baculovirus FGFs show that they cluster in a similar fashion to phylogenies based on the concatenated viral proteomes. We have constructed homology models for several baculovirus FGFs to predict their ability to be secreted, dimerize and bind heparin, and the results of our analyses will be presented.
Keywords: genomics, homology model
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