Fig. 1

Buffy is closely related to human Bcl-2 ovarian killer (Bok). When Buffy protein is aligned with human Bok, the Bcl-2 homology (BH) domains show strong conservation. Clustal Omega multiple sequence alignment [64, 65] of Drosophila melanogaster Buffy protein (Drosophila melanogaster NP_523702.1) with the human Bok (Homo sapiens NP_115904.1) showing the highlighted conserved BH domains, the BH3-homology region binding site, and the TM (trans-membrane) helices. Buffy possesses a monopartite basically charged nuclear localisation signal (NLS) region. The domains were identified using NCBI Conserved Domain Database Search (CDD) [66]. “Asterisks” indicate the residues that are identical, “colon” indicate the conserved substitutions, “dot” indicate the semi-conserved substitutions. Colours show the chemical nature of amino acids: red is small hydrophobic (including aromatic), blue is acidic, magenta is basic, and green is basic with hydroxyl or amine groups