The scale and evolutionary significance of horizontal gene transfer in the choanoflagellate Monosiga brevicollis

BMC Genomics

Research Article

Jinling Huang¹  Xiangyang Hu²  Jipei Yue³  Guiling Sun⁴ 

[1] Department of Biology, East Carolina University, 27858, Greenville, NC, USA;Key Laboratory of Biodiversity and Biogeography, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 650201, Kunming, China;Key Laboratory of Biodiversity and Biogeography, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 650201, Kunming, China;Department of Biology, East Carolina University, 27858, Greenville, NC, USA;Key Laboratory of Economic Plants and Biotechnology, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 650201, Kunming, China;Department of Biology, East Carolina University, 27858, Greenville, NC, USA;

关键词: Genome evolution;    Choanoflagellates;    HGT frequency;    Eukaryotic evolution;    Adaptation;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2164-14-729

 received in 2012-06-12, accepted in 2013-10-17,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundIt is generally agreed that horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is common in phagotrophic protists. However, the overall scale of HGT and the cumulative impact of acquired genes on the evolution of these organisms remain largely unknown.ResultsChoanoflagellates are phagotrophs and the closest living relatives of animals. In this study, we performed phylogenomic analyses to investigate the scale of HGT and the evolutionary importance of horizontally acquired genes in the choanoflagellate Monosiga brevicollis. Our analyses identified 405 genes that are likely derived from algae and prokaryotes, accounting for approximately 4.4% of the Monosiga nuclear genome. Many of the horizontally acquired genes identified in Monosiga were probably acquired from food sources, rather than by endosymbiotic gene transfer (EGT) from obsolete endosymbionts or plastids. Of 193 genes identified in our analyses with functional information, 84 (43.5%) are involved in carbohydrate or amino acid metabolism, and 45 (23.3%) are transporters and/or involved in response to oxidative, osmotic, antibiotic, or heavy metal stresses. Some identified genes may also participate in biosynthesis of important metabolites such as vitamins C and K12, porphyrins and phospholipids.ConclusionsOur results suggest that HGT is frequent in Monosiga brevicollis and might have contributed substantially to its adaptation and evolution. This finding also highlights the importance of HGT in the genome and organismal evolution of phagotrophic eukaryotes.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Yue et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.