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Chromosoma (2015) 124:153162
DOI 10.1007/s00412-014-0503-8
REVIEW
The Bucentaur (BCNT) protein family: a long-neglected class of essential proteins required for chromatin/chromosome organization and function
Giovanni Messina & Emanuele Celauro &
Maria Teresa Atterrato & Ennio Giordano &
Shintaro Iwashita & Patrizio Dimitri
Received: 27 October 2014 /Revised: 5 December 2014 /Accepted: 5 December 2014 /Published online: 31 December 2014 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
Abstract The evolutionarily conserved Bucentaur (BCNT) protein superfamily was identified about two decades ago in bovines, but its biological role has long remained largely unknown. Sparse studies in the literature suggest that BCNT proteins perform important functions during development. Only recently, a functional analysis of the Drosophila BCNT ortholog, called YETI, has provided evidence that it is essential for proper fly development and plays roles in chromatin organization. Here, we introduce the BCNT proteins and comprehensively review data that contribute to clarify their function and mechanistic clues on how they may control development in multicellular organisms.
Keywords Bucentaur (BCNT) . YETI . ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling complexes . H2Avariant . Epigenetics
Introduction
Our primary obligation is not following, as animals do, the crowd of those who precede usLucio Anneo Seneca
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no farther than the crowdAlbert Einstein
Conformism is frequent in Science, and, as a consequence, potentially important facts and results can be ignored or secreted for long time. This appears to be the case for the evolutionarily conserved BCNT protein superfamily which, in spite of its widespread distribution across both animal and plant kingdoms, has long been neglected and its function(s) remained largely unexplored.
The BCNT proteins in ruminants: the origins
The first member of the BCNT protein superfamily, p97BCNT/ CFDP2, was discovered in bovine brain during screening for hybridoma producing monoclonal antibodies against a Ras GTPase (Ras GAP) activating protein (Nobukuni et al. 1997; Iwashita and Osada 2011). A purified glutathione-S-transferase (GST) fusion protein of rat Rasa2 (GAP1m) was used to immunize BALB/c mice and the generated hybridomas were screened by Western blotting using bovine brain extract. A single band with a molecular mass of 97 kDa was found in five independent clones, exactly the expected size of rat Rasa2. However, the 97-kDa protein purified from bovine brain extracts by affinity chromatography turned...