Molecular characterization and protein structure prediction of heat shock transcriptional factors in goat (Capra hircus) and sheep (Ovis aries).

The heat shock factors are important as they are master regulator of heat shock response. There are only few mammalian HSFs which have been characterized, namely HSF-1, HSF-2, HSF-4 and HSF-5. The present study was aimed to clone and sequence characterize the partial open reading frames (ORFs) of HSF-2 and HSF-5 gene from cDNA isolated from testicular tissue of sheep (Macheri) and goat (Beetal). The partial ORFs of HSF-2 gene was observed to be 1627 bp in sheep and 1179 bp in goat and for HSF-5 it is 1137 bp in sheep and 1027 bp in goat. HSF-2 and HSF-5 encode a putative protein of 593 and 461 amino acid in goat and 568 and 553 amino acid in sheep, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis between the different orthologs suggested that these proteins are conserved from bovine to humans as well as in other mammals. Further, domain analyses using PredictNLS, MARCOIL and NetNES revealed that the members of HSF-2 protein orthologs contained all major domains, i.e., DNA-binding domain (DBD) and oligomerization domain (HR-A/B, and HR-C). The 3D structure of sheep and goat HSF-2 protein was predicted using SWISS-MODEL, which showed similar confirmation with the human HSF-2 protein sequence showing functional similarity between them.