The family of DOF transcription factors:: from green unicellular algae to vascular plants

This article deals with the origin and evolution of the DOF transcription factor family through a phylogenetic analysis of those DOF sequences identified from a variety of representative organisms from different taxonomic groups: the green unicellular alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, the moss Physcomitrella patens, the fern Selaginella moellendorffii, the gymnosperm Pinus taeda, the dicotyledoneous Arabidopsis thaliana and the monocotyledoneous angiosperms Oryza sativa and Hordeum vulgare. In barley, we have identified 26 different DOF genes by sequence analyses of clones isolated from the screening of genomic libraries and of ESTs, whereas a single DOF gene was identified by bioinformatics searches in the Chlamydomonas genome. The phylogenetic analysis groups all these genes into six major clusters of orthologs originated from a primary basal grade. Our results suggest that duplications of an ancestral DOF, probably formed in the photosynthetic eukaryotic ancestor, followed by subsequent neo-, sub-functionalization and pseudogenization processes would have triggered the expansion of the DOF family. Loss, acquisition and shuffling of conserved motifs among the new DOFs likely underlie the mechanism of formation of the distinct subfamilies.