2.1. Identification of C6 Zinc Genes and C6-TFs

To identify the Zn(II)₂Cys₆ zinc cluster genes, ScanProsite, a web-based tool for detecting PROSITE signature matches in protein sequences (http://www.expasy.org/tools/scanprosite/), was used to predict the conserved Zn(II)₂Cys₆ domain (PS00463 and PS50048) proteins based on the genome database of T. guangdongense, previously known as Cordyceps guangdongensis [30] (abbreviated to CCG) according to the method described by De Castro et al [31]. Each candidate sequence of C6 zinc proteins was further confirmed by domain analysis using the Pfam protein family database (http://pfam.xfam.org) [32] and SMART databases (http://smart.emblheidelberg.de/) [33]. C6 zinc proteins which contained the fungal specific transcription factor domain (C6-TFs) were also analyzed by Pfam and SMART databases. Identification of C6-proteins and C6-TFs in C. militaris and O. sinensis were performed similarly based on the genome sequences from the Ensembl fungi database (http://fungi.ensembl.org/index.html).