Ancient gene transfer from algae to animals: Mechanisms and evolutionary significance

BMC Evolutionary Biology

Research Article

Jipei Yue¹  Jinling Huang¹  Guiling Sun¹  Jianfan Wen²  Ting Ni³  Yong Zou³ 

[1] Department of Biology, East Carolina University, 27858, Greenville, NC, USA;State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 650223, Kunming, Yunnan, China;State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 650223, Kunming, Yunnan, China;Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100039, Beijing, China;

关键词: Gene transfer;    Endosymbiosis;    Plastids;    Animal evolution;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2148-12-83

 received in 2012-03-21, accepted in 2012-06-01,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundHorizontal gene transfer (HGT) is traditionally considered to be rare in multicellular eukaryotes such as animals. Recently, many genes of miscellaneous algal origins were discovered in choanoflagellates. Considering that choanoflagellates are the existing closest relatives of animals, we speculated that ancient HGT might have occurred in the unicellular ancestor of animals and affected the long-term evolution of animals.ResultsThrough genome screening, phylogenetic and domain analyses, we identified 14 gene families, including 92 genes, in the tunicate Ciona intestinalis that are likely derived from miscellaneous photosynthetic eukaryotes. Almost all of these gene families are distributed in diverse animals, suggesting that they were mostly acquired by the common ancestor of animals. Their miscellaneous origins also suggest that these genes are not derived from a particular algal endosymbiont. In addition, most genes identified in our analyses are functionally related to molecule transport, cellular regulation and methylation signaling, suggesting that the acquisition of these genes might have facilitated the intercellular communication in the ancestral animal.ConclusionsOur findings provide additional evidence that algal genes in aplastidic eukaryotes are not exclusively derived from historical plastids and thus important for interpreting the evolution of eukaryotic photosynthesis. Most importantly, our data represent the first evidence that more anciently acquired genes might exist in animals and that ancient HGT events have played an important role in animal evolution.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Ni et al.;licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. 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.