BMC Evolutionary Biology BioMed Central Research article Open Access Genomic analysis of the TRIM family reveals two groups of genes with distinct evolutionary properties Marco Sardiello1, Stefano Cairo1,3, Bianca Fontanella1,4, Andrea Ballabio1,2 and Germana Meroni*1 Address: 1Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine (TIGEM), Via P. Castellino 111, 80131 Naples, Italy, 2Department of Pediatrics, Federico II University, Via Sergio Pansini 5, 80131 Naples, Italy, 3Unite d'Oncogenèse et Virologie Moléculaire, Batiment Lwoff, Institut Pasteur, 28 rue de Dr. Roux, 75724 Paris Cedex 15, France and 4Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Salerno, 84084 Fisciano (SA), Italy Email: Marco Sardiello -
[email protected]; Stefano Cairo -
[email protected]; Bianca Fontanella -
[email protected]; Andrea Ballabio -
[email protected]; Germana Meroni* -
[email protected] * Corresponding author Published: 1 August 2008 Received: 11 September 2007 Accepted: 1 August 2008 BMC Evolutionary Biology 2008, 8:225 doi:10.1186/1471-2148-8-225 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/8/225 © 2008 Sardiello et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: The TRIM family is composed of multi-domain proteins that display the Tripartite Motif (RING, B-box and Coiled-coil) that can be associated with a C-terminal domain. TRIM genes are involved in ubiquitylation and are implicated in a variety of human pathologies, from Mendelian inherited disorders to cancer, and are also involved in cellular response to viral infection.