Type 2C protein phosphatases in fungi.

Type 2C Ser/Thr phosphatases are a remarkable class of protein phosphatases, which are conserved in eukaryotes and involved in a large variety of functional processes. Unlike in other Ser/Thr phosphatases, the catalytic polypeptide is not usually associated with regulatory subunits, and functional specificity is achieved by encoding multiple isoforms. For fungi, most information comes from the study of type 2C protein phosphatase (PP2C) enzymes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, where seven PP2C-encoding genes (PTC1 to -7) with diverse functions can be found. More recently, data on several Candida albicans PP2C proteins became available, suggesting that some of them can be involved in virulence. In this work we review the available literature on fungal PP2Cs and explore sequence databases to provide a comprehensive overview of these enzymes in fungi.