Are Aspergillus QUTA and AROM homologous?
A review published several years ago [Hawkins, A.R. & Lamb, H.K. (1995) Eur. J. Biochem. 232, 7-18] proposed that genetic, biochemical and physiological data can override sequence comparison in the determination of homology in instances where structural information is unavailable. Their lead example was the hypothesis that the transcriptional activator protein for quinate catabolism in Aspergillus nidulans, QUTA, is derived from the pentafunctional AROM protein by a gene duplication followed by cleavage [Hawkins, A.R., Lamb, H.K., Moore, J.D. & Roberts, C.F. (1993) Gene 136, 49-54]. We tested this hypothesis by a sensitive combination of position-specific log-odds scoring matrix methods. The position-specific log-odds scoring matrices were derived from a large number of 3-dehydroquinate synthase and 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase domains that were proposed to be the domains from the AROM protein that gave rise to the transcriptional activator protein for quinate metabolism
