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Updated: Jul 8, 2026

Functional Imaging of Viral Transcription Factories Using 3D Fluorescence Microscopy
Published on: January 18, 2018
BEN: a novel domain in chromatin factors and DNA viral proteins
Saraswathi Abhiman1, Lakshminarayan M Iyer, L Aravind
1National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA.
Abstract:
We report a previously uncharacterized alpha-helical module, the BEN domain, in diverse animal proteins such as BANP/SMAR1, NAC1 and the Drosophila mod(mdg4) isoform C, in the chordopoxvirus virosomal protein E5R and in several proteins of polydnaviruses. Contextual analysis suggests that the BEN domain mediates protein-DNA and protein-protein interactions during chromatin organization and transcription. The presence of BEN domains in a poxviral early virosomal protein and in polydnaviral proteins also suggests a possible role for them in organization of viral DNA during replication or transcription.
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