FGF gene family characterization provides insights into its adaptive evolution in Carnivora

Abstract

Fibroblast growth factors (FGFs), which participate in diverse biological activities, such as lipid and carbohydrate metabolism, play vital roles in animal development and physiology. They are a family of very conservative growth factors and comprise 22 members in mammals (Brewer et al., 2016). The 22 FGFs can be divided into three types: the canonical FGFs (cFGFs), the hormone-like FGFs (hFGFs), and the intracellular FGFs (iFGFs) (Itoh & Ornitz, 2011). While cFGFs and hFGFs are ligands that act through binding to appropriate receptors, iFGFs can act independently of receptor-binding.The hFGFs contained members of FGF19, FGF21, and FGF23; the iFGFs include FGF11, FGF12, FGF13, and FGF14; the rest members (FGF1 to FGF10, FGF16, FGF 17, FGF18, FGF20, and FGF22) constitute the cFGFs (Ornitz & Itoh, 2015). The cFGFs play important roles in cell growth, differentiation, and organ development and