Previous studies have shown that Eumycetes fungi can acylate arylamine thanks to arylamine N-acetyltransferases, xenobiotic-metabolizing enzymes also found in animals and bacteria. In this article, we present the results
of mining 96 available fungal genome sequences for arylamine N-acetyltransferase genes and propose their phylogeny. The filamentous Pezizomycotina are shown to possess many putative N-acetyltransferases, whilst these are often lacking in other fungal groups. The evolution of the N-acetyltransferases is best explained by the presence of at least one gene in the opisthokont ancestor of the fungi and animal
kingdoms, followed by recurrent gene losses and gene duplications. A possible horizontal gene transfer event may have occurred
from bacteria to the basidiomycetous yeast Malassezia globosa.
Keywords Arylamine N-acetyltransferase - Xenobiotics - Fungi - Molecular phylogenetics - Genome mining - Horizontal transfer