Deciphering the evolution of ferritin gene family in various living organisms

Ferritin,an iron binding protein,is an essential element in biological systems. study of the two main subunits of ferritin; i.e.,the heavy chain (fth) subunit and ferritin light chain (ftl) subunit,has provided new insights into living organisms and improved the efficacy of ferroxidase activity. in this study,ferritin genes were identified in 24 organisms,including microbes,plants and animals. mammalian ferritin genes exhibited the highest numbers and were found in clusters on x chromosomes considering duplication might have occurred. in addition,ferritin genes contained fth subunits have different distribution compared with ftl subunits in mammalian. a phylogenetic tree was constructed according to the nucleotide coding sequences and 7 groups were classified. fast gene loss and duplication were discovered. investigation of conserved motif in different groups implies diverse evolution. remarkably,the copy numbers of ferritin heavy polypeptide-like 17 homologs in mammalian were strongly related to the offspring number. © 2015,university of agriculture. all rights reserved.