bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/287755; this version posted March 23, 2018. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. Nach is a novel ancestral subfamily ofthe CNC-bZIP transcription factors selected during evolution from the marine bacteria to human Yuping Zhu1, Meng Wang1, Yuancai Xiang1, Lu Qiu1, Shaofan Hu1, Zhengwen Zhang2, Peter Mattjus3, and Yiguo Zhang1,* 1The Laboratory of Cell Biochemistry and Topogenetic Regulation, College of Bioengineering and Faculty of Sciences, Chongqing University, No. 174 Shazheng Street, Shapingba District, Chongqing 400044, China; 2Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, School of Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, 42 Western Common Road, G22 5PQ, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom; 3Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Åbo Akademi University, Artillerigatan 6A, III, BioCity, FI-20520 Turku, Finland. *Correspondence should be addressed to Yiguo Zhang (email:
[email protected] or
[email protected]). ABSTRACT All living organisms have undergone the evolutionary selection under the changing natural environments to survive as diverse life forms. All life processes including normal homeostatic development and growth into organismic bodies with distinct cellular identifications, as well as their adaptive responses to various intracellular and environmental stresses, are tightly controlled by signaling of transcriptional networks towards regulation of cognate genes by many different transcription factors. Amongst them, one of the most conserved is the basic-region leucine zipper (bZIP) family. They play vital roles essential for cell proliferation, differentiation and maintenance in complex multicellular organisms. Notably, an unresolved divergence on the evolution of bZIP proteins is addressed here.