G C A T T A C G G C A T genes Communication Molecular Phylogenetic Analysis of the AIG Family in Vertebrates Yuqi Huang 1,†, Minghao Sun 2,† , Lenan Zhuang 2,* and Jin He 1,* 1 Department of Animal Science, College of Animal Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China;
[email protected] 2 Department of Veterinary Medicine, College of Animal Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] (L.Z.);
[email protected] (J.H.); Tel.: +86-15-8361-28207 (L.Z.); +86-17-6818-74822 (J.H.) † These authors contributed equally to this work. Abstract: Androgen-inducible genes (AIGs), which can be regulated by androgen level, constitute a group of genes characterized by the presence of the AIG/FAR-17a domain in its protein sequence. Previous studies on AIGs demonstrated that one member of the gene family, AIG1, is involved in many biological processes in cancer cell lines and that ADTRP is associated with cardiovascular diseases. It has been shown that the numbers of AIG paralogs in humans, mice, and zebrafish are 2, 2, and 3, respectively, indicating possible gene duplication events during vertebrate evolution. Therefore, classifying subgroups of AIGs and identifying the homologs of each AIG member are important to characterize this novel gene family further. In this study, vertebrate AIGs were phyloge- netically grouped into three major clades, ADTRP, AIG1, and AIG-L, with AIG-L also evident in an outgroup consisting of invertebrsate species. In this case, AIG-L, as the ancestral AIG, gave rise to ADTRP and AIG1 after two rounds of whole-genome duplications during vertebrate evolution.