A Complex and Punctate Distribution of Three Eukaryotic Genes Derived by Lateral Gene Transfer

Overview

Journal BMC Evol Biol

Publisher Biomed Central

Specialty Biology

Date 2007 Jun 15

PMID 17562012

Citations 20

Authors

Matthew B Rogers

Russell F Watkins

James T Harper

Dion G Durnford

Michael W Gray

Patrick J Keeling

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: Lateral gene transfer is increasingly invoked to explain phylogenetic results that conflict with our understanding of organismal relationships. In eukaryotes, the most common observation interpreted in this way is the appearance of a bacterial gene (one that is not clearly derived from the mitochondrion or plastid) in a eukaryotic nuclear genome. Ideally such an observation would involve a single eukaryote or a small group of related eukaryotes encoding a gene from a specific bacterial lineage.

Results: Here we show that several apparently simple cases of lateral transfer are actually more complex than they originally appeared: in these instances we find that two or more distantly related eukaryotic groups share the same bacterial gene, resulting in a punctate distribution. Specifically, we describe phylogenies of three core carbon metabolic enzymes: transketolase, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase and ribulose-5-phosphate-3-epimerase. Phylogenetic trees of each of these enzymes includes a strongly-supported clade consisting of several eukaryotes that are distantly related at the organismal level, but whose enzymes are apparently all derived from the same lateral transfer. With less sampling any one of these examples would appear to be a simple case of bacterium-to-eukaryote lateral transfer; taken together, their evolutionary histories cannot be so simple. The distributions of these genes may represent ancient paralogy events or genes that have been transferred from bacteria to an ancient ancestor of the eukaryotes that retain them. They may alternatively have been transferred laterally from a bacterium to a single eukaryotic lineage and subsequently transferred between distantly related eukaryotes.

Conclusion: Determining how complex the distribution of a transferred gene is depends on the sampling available. These results show that seemingly simple cases may be revealed to be more complex with greater sampling, suggesting many bacterial genes found in eukaryotic genomes may have a punctate distribution.

Citing Articles

Extensive horizontal gene transfer, duplication, and loss of chlorophyll synthesis genes in the algae.

Hunsperger H, Randhawa T, Cattolico R BMC Evol Biol. 2015; 15:16.

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Frequent, independent transfers of a catabolic gene from bacteria to contrasted filamentous eukaryotes.

Bruto M, Prigent-Combaret C, Luis P, Moenne-Loccoz Y, Muller D Proc Biol Sci. 2014; 281(1789):20140848.

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Identification of a novel pentatricopeptide repeat subfamily with a C-terminal domain of bacterial origin acquired via ancient horizontal gene transfer.

Manna S, Barth C BMC Res Notes. 2013; 6:525.

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New insights on the biology of swine respiratory tract mycoplasmas from a comparative genome analysis.

Siqueira F, Thompson C, Virginio V, Gonchoroski T, Reolon L, Almeida L BMC Genomics. 2013; 14:175.

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Broad distribution of TPI-GAPDH fusion proteins among eukaryotes: evidence for glycolytic reactions in the mitochondrion?.

Nakayama T, Ishida K, Archibald J PLoS One. 2013; 7(12):e52340.

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