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Updated: Apr 27, 2026

An Integrated Approach for Microprotein Identification and Sequence Analysis
Published on: July 12, 2022
Identification and phylogenetic analyses of VASt, an uncharacterized protein domain associated with lipid-binding
Mehdi Khafif, Ludovic Cottret, Claudine Balagué
1INRA, Laboratoire des Interactions Plantes-Microorganismes (LIPM), UMR441, 24 Chemin de Borde Rouge - Auzeville, CS52627, F31326 Castanet Tolosan Cedex, France. Sylvain.raffaele@toulouse.inra.fr.
Background:
Several regulators of programmed cell death (PCD) in plants encode proteins with putative lipid-binding domains. Among them, VAD1 is a regulator of PCD propagation harboring a GRAM putative lipid-binding domain. However the function of VAD1 at the subcellular level is unknown and the domain architecture of VAD1 has not been analyzed in details.
Results:
We analyzed sequence conservation across the plant kingdom in the VAD1 protein and identified an uncharacterized VASt (VAD1 Analog of StAR-related lipid transfer) domain. Using profile hidden Markov models (profile HMMs) and phylogenetic analysis we found that this domain is conserved among eukaryotes and generally associates with various lipid-binding domains. Proteins containing both a GRAM and a VASt domain include notably the yeast Ysp2 cell death regulator and numerous uncharacterized proteins. Using structure-based phylogeny, we found that the VASt domain is structurally related to Bet v1-like domains.
Conclusion:
We identified a novel protein domain ubiquitous in Eukaryotic genomes and belonging to the Bet v1-like superfamily. Our findings open perspectives for the functional analysis of VASt-containing proteins and the characterization of novel mechanisms regulating PCD.
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