Fungal Divergent Actin: Trait mapping and function hypothesis

This projects investigates the potential new function of a divergent actin form mainly found in fungal species (Fungal Divergent Actin (FDA)) using trait mapping and association analysis as a novel strategy to generate hypotheses about protein function. We use the ProteinCartography pipeline (https://doi.org/10.57844/arcadia-a5a6-1068), combined with trait mapping and trait association analysis to generate hypotheses about the function of FDA. The overall idea is to identify a working set of fungal species for which we are able to confidently determine the presence or absence of fungal divergent actin, gather fungal trait information for these species (ecological traits, structural traits, genetic traits etc...) and determine whether there is any correlation between the presence/absence of FDA and one of the fungal trait. Any correlation between FDA presence/absence and fungal trait can then be used to infer hypothesis about the function of FDA. Our approach is divided into four main steps: - Step 1: Expanding the initial set of fungal species that possess FDA - Step 2: Defining the 'working set of species' (set of fungal species for which we can determine their FDA status (presence or absence)) - Step 3: Curating fungal trait information - Step 4: Statistical modeling of the association of FDA and chosen fungal traits In this upload, we provide files that are parts of Steps 1 & 2: - ProteinCartography folder of the ProteinCartography run for the FDA proteins: fungal_divergent_actins_PC.zip - .csv table of all fungal proteins and associated species in Uniprot that have available structure in AlphaFold: Fungi_prot_uniprot.csv ProteinCartography run: fungal_divergent_actins_PC.zip (Step 1 - Expanding the initial set of fungal species that possess FDA) The aim of the first step, is to detect as many fungal species as possible that possess FDA. For this, we used ProteinCartography (https://doi.org/10.57844/arcadia-a5a6-1068), to screen for protein that have similar structures than the previously identified Fungal Divergent Actin (REF actin pub) and expand the original cluster of FDA. After identifying 6 representative sequences of Fungal Divergent Actins, we used each of the six proteins as input proteins for "Search Mode'' of the pipeline ProteinCartography. Full details on the ProteinCartography pipeline can be found in the GitHub repository and accompanying pub (https://doi.org/10.57844/arcadia-a5a6-1068). The fungal_divergent_actins_PC.zip co