HET-E and HET-D Belong to a New Subfamily of WD40 Proteins Involved in Vegetative Incompatibility Specificity in the Fungus Podospora anserina

Corresponding author: Béatrice Turcq, Institut de Biochimie et de Génétique Cellulaires, CNRS UMR 5095, 1 rue Camille Saint-Saëns, 33077 Bordeaux Cedex, France., beatrice.turcq{at}ibgc.u-bordeaux2.fr (E-mail)

Communicating editor: R. H. DAVIS

Vegetative incompatibility, which is very common in filamentous fungi, prevents a viable heterokaryotic cell from being formed by the fusion of filaments from two different wild-type strains. Such incompatibility is always the consequence of at least one genetic difference in specific genes (het genes). In Podospora anserina, alleles of the het-e and het-d loci control heterokaryon viability through genetic interactions with alleles of the unlinked het-c locus. The het-d2^Y gene was isolated and shown to have strong similarity with the previously described het-e1^A gene. Like the HET-E protein, the HET-D putative protein displayed a GTP-binding domain and seemed to require a minimal number of 11 WD40 repeats to be active in incompatibility. Apart from incompatibility specificity, no other function could be identified by disrupting the het-d gene. Sequence comparison of different het-e alleles suggested that het-e specificity is determined by the sequence of the WD40 repeat domain. In particular, the amino acids present on the upper face of the predicted ß-propeller structure defined by this domain may confer the incompatible interaction specificity.

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