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Caetano-Anollés K, Aziz MF, Mughal F, Caetano-Anollés G. On Protein Loops, Prior Molecular States and Common Ancestors of Life. J Mol Evol 2024:10.1007/s00239-024-10167-y. [PMID: 38652291 DOI: 10.1007/s00239-024-10167-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/05/2024] [Accepted: 03/22/2024] [Indexed: 04/25/2024]
Abstract
The principle of continuity demands the existence of prior molecular states and common ancestors responsible for extant macromolecular structure. Here, we focus on the emergence and evolution of loop prototypes - the elemental architects of protein domain structure. Phylogenomic reconstruction spanning superkingdoms and viruses generated an evolutionary chronology of prototypes with six distinct evolutionary phases defining a most parsimonious evolutionary progression of cellular life. Each phase was marked by strategic prototype accumulation shaping the structures and functions of common ancestors. The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) of cells and viruses and the last universal cellular ancestor (LUCellA) defined stem lines that were structurally and functionally complex. The evolutionary saga highlighted transformative forces. LUCA lacked biosynthetic ribosomal machinery, while the pivotal LUCellA lacked essential DNA biosynthesis and modern transcription. Early proteins therefore relied on RNA for genetic information storage but appeared initially decoupled from it, hinting at transformative shifts of genetic processing. Urancestral loop types suggest advanced folding designs were present at an early evolutionary stage. An exploration of loop geometric properties revealed gradual replacement of prototypes with α-helix and β-strand bracing structures over time, paving the way for the dominance of other loop types. AlphFold2-generated atomic models of prototype accretion described patterns of fold emergence. Our findings favor a ‛processual' model of evolving stem lines aligned with Woese's vision of a communal world. This model prompts discussing the 'problem of ancestors' and the challenges that lie ahead for research in taxonomy, evolution and complexity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kelsey Caetano-Anollés
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences and Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA
- Callout Biotech, Albuquerque, NM, 87112, USA
| | - M Fayez Aziz
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences and Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA
| | - Fizza Mughal
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences and Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA
| | - Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences and Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA.
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2
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Kwon T, Hovde BT. Global characterization of biosynthetic gene clusters in non-model eukaryotes using domain architectures. Sci Rep 2024; 14:1534. [PMID: 38233413 PMCID: PMC10794256 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-50095-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/09/2023] [Accepted: 12/15/2023] [Indexed: 01/19/2024] Open
Abstract
The majority of pharmaceuticals are derived from natural products, bioactive compounds naturally synthesized by organisms to provide evolutionary advantages. Although the rich evolutionary history of eukaryotic algal species implicates a high potential for natural product-based drug discovery, it remains largely untouched. This study investigates 2762 putative biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) from 212 eukaryotic algal genomes. To analyze a vast set of structurally diverse BGCs, we employed comparative analysis based on the vectorization of biosynthetic domains, referred to as biosynthetic domain architecture (BDA). By characterizing core biosynthetic machineries through BDA, we identified key BDAs of modular BGCs in diverse eukaryotes and introduced 16 candidate modular BGCs with similar BDAs to previously validated BGCs. This study provides a global characterization of eukaryotic algal BGCs, offering an alternative to laborious manual curation for BGC prioritization.
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Affiliation(s)
- Taehyung Kwon
- Genomics and Bioanalytics Group, Bioscience Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA
| | - Blake T Hovde
- Genomics and Bioanalytics Group, Bioscience Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA.
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3
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Nguyen LAC, Mori M, Yasuda Y, Galipon J. Functional Consequences of Shifting Transcript Boundaries in Glucose Starvation. Mol Cell Biol 2023; 43:611-628. [PMID: 37937348 PMCID: PMC10761120 DOI: 10.1080/10985549.2023.2270406] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/11/2023] [Accepted: 10/10/2023] [Indexed: 11/09/2023] Open
Abstract
Glucose is a major source of carbon and essential for the survival of many organisms, ranging from yeast to human. A sudden 60-fold reduction of glucose in exponentially growing fission yeast induces transcriptome-wide changes in gene expression. This regulation is multilayered, and the boundaries of transcripts are known to vary, with functional consequences at the protein level. By combining direct RNA sequencing with 5'-CAGE and short-read sequencing, we accurately defined the 5'- and 3'-ends of transcripts that are both poly(A) tailed and 5'-capped in glucose starvation, followed by proteome analysis. Our results confirm previous experimentally validated loci with alternative isoforms and reveal several transcriptome-wide patterns. First, we show that sense-antisense gene pairs are more strongly anticorrelated when a time lag is taken into account. Second, we show that the glucose starvation response initially elicits a shortening of 3'-UTRs and poly(A) tails, followed by a shortening of the 5'-UTRs at later time points. These result in domain gains and losses in proteins involved in the stress response. Finally, the relatively poor overlap both between differentially expressed genes (DEGs), differential transcript usage events (DTUs), and differentially detected proteins (DDPs) highlight the need for further study on post-transcriptional regulation mechanisms in glucose starvation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lan Anh Catherine Nguyen
- Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University, Yamagata, Tsuruoka, Japan
- Systems Biology Program, Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Kanagawa, Fujisawa, Japan
| | - Masaru Mori
- Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University, Yamagata, Tsuruoka, Japan
- Systems Biology Program, Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Kanagawa, Fujisawa, Japan
- Institute of Innovation for Future Society, Nagoya University, Aichi, Nagoya, Japan
| | - Yuji Yasuda
- Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University, Yamagata, Tsuruoka, Japan
- Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University, Kanagawa, Fujisawa, Japan
| | - Josephine Galipon
- Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University, Yamagata, Tsuruoka, Japan
- Systems Biology Program, Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Kanagawa, Fujisawa, Japan
- Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Yamagata University, Yamagata, Yonezawa, Japan
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4
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Caetano-Anollés G. Agency in evolution of biomolecular communication. Ann N Y Acad Sci 2023; 1525:88-103. [PMID: 37219369 DOI: 10.1111/nyas.15005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/24/2023]
Abstract
Biomolecular communication demands that interactions between parts of a molecular system act as scaffolds for message transmission. It also requires an organized system of signs-a communicative agency-for creating and transmitting meaning. The emergence of agency, the capacity to act in a given context and generate end-directed behaviors, has baffled evolutionary biologists for centuries. Here, I explore its emergence with knowledge grounded in over two decades of evolutionary genomic and bioinformatic exploration. Biphasic processes of growth and diversification exist that generate hierarchy and modularity in biological systems at widely ranging time scales. Similarly, a biphasic process exists in communication that constructs a message before it can be transmitted for interpretation. Transmission dissipates matter-energy and information and involves computation. Agency emerges when molecular machinery generates hierarchical layers of vocabularies in an entangled communication network clustered around the universal Turing machine of the ribosome. Computations canalize biological systems to perform biological functions in a dissipative quest to structure long-lived occurrents. This occurs within the confines of a "triangle of persistence" that maximizes invariance with trade-offs between economy, flexibility, and robustness. Thus, learning from previous historical and circumstantial experiences unifies modules in a hierarchy that expands the agency of systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences and C. R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, USA
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5
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Genomic Survey of Flavin Monooxygenases in Wild and Cultivated Rice Provides Insight into Evolution and Functional Diversities. Int J Mol Sci 2023; 24:ijms24044190. [PMID: 36835601 PMCID: PMC9960948 DOI: 10.3390/ijms24044190] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/06/2022] [Revised: 01/08/2023] [Accepted: 01/12/2023] [Indexed: 02/22/2023] Open
Abstract
The flavin monooxygenase (FMO) enzyme was discovered in mammalian liver cells that convert a carcinogenic compound, N-N'-dimethylaniline, into a non-carcinogenic compound, N-oxide. Since then, many FMOs have been reported in animal systems for their primary role in the detoxification of xenobiotic compounds. In plants, this family has diverged to perform varied functions like pathogen defense, auxin biosynthesis, and S-oxygenation of compounds. Only a few members of this family, primarily those involved in auxin biosynthesis, have been functionally characterized in plant species. Thus, the present study aims to identify all the members of the FMO family in 10 different wild and cultivated Oryza species. Genome-wide analysis of the FMO family in different Oryza species reveals that each species has multiple FMO members in its genome and that this family is conserved throughout evolution. Taking clues from its role in pathogen defense and its possible function in ROS scavenging, we have also assessed the involvement of this family in abiotic stresses. A detailed in silico expression analysis of the FMO family in Oryza sativa subsp. japonica revealed that only a subset of genes responds to different abiotic stresses. This is supported by the experimental validation of a few selected genes using qRT-PCR in stress-sensitive Oryza sativa subsp. indica and stress-sensitive wild rice Oryza nivara. The identification and comprehensive in silico analysis of FMO genes from different Oryza species carried out in this study will serve as the foundation for further structural and functional studies of FMO genes in rice as well as other crop types.
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Budimir I, Giampieri E, Saccenti E, Suarez-Diez M, Tarozzi M, Dall'Olio D, Merlotti A, Curti N, Remondini D, Castellani G, Sala C. Intraspecies characterization of bacteria via evolutionary modeling of protein domains. Sci Rep 2022; 12:16595. [PMID: 36198716 PMCID: PMC9534902 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-21036-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/17/2022] [Accepted: 09/22/2022] [Indexed: 12/04/2022] Open
Abstract
The ability to detect and characterize bacteria within a biological sample is crucial for the monitoring of infections and epidemics, as well as for the study of human health and its relationship with commensal microorganisms. To this aim, a commonly used technique is the 16S rRNA gene targeted sequencing. PCR-amplified 16S sequences derived from the sample of interest are usually clustered into the so-called Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) based on pairwise similarities. Then, representative OTU sequences are compared with reference (human-made) databases to derive their phylogeny and taxonomic classification. Here, we propose a new reference-free approach to define the phylogenetic distance between bacteria based on protein domains, which are the evolving units of proteins. We extract the protein domain profiles of 3368 bacterial genomes and we use an ecological approach to model their Relative Species Abundance distribution. Based on the model parameters, we then derive a new measurement of phylogenetic distance. Finally, we show that such model-based distance is capable of detecting differences between bacteria in cases in which the 16S rRNA-based method fails, providing a possibly complementary approach , which is particularly promising for the analysis of bacterial populations measured by shotgun sequencing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Iva Budimir
- Department of Physics and Astronomy 'Augusto Righi', University of Bologna, 40127, Bologna, Italy
| | - Enrico Giampieri
- Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, 40138, Bologna, Italy
| | - Edoardo Saccenti
- Laboratory of Systems and Synthetic Biology, Wageningen University and Research, 6708 WE, Wageningen, The Netherlands
| | - Maria Suarez-Diez
- Laboratory of Systems and Synthetic Biology, Wageningen University and Research, 6708 WE, Wageningen, The Netherlands
| | - Martina Tarozzi
- Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, 40138, Bologna, Italy
| | - Daniele Dall'Olio
- Department of Physics and Astronomy 'Augusto Righi', University of Bologna, 40127, Bologna, Italy
| | - Alessandra Merlotti
- Department of Physics and Astronomy 'Augusto Righi', University of Bologna, 40127, Bologna, Italy
| | - Nico Curti
- Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, 40138, Bologna, Italy
| | - Daniel Remondini
- Department of Physics and Astronomy 'Augusto Righi', University of Bologna, 40127, Bologna, Italy
| | - Gastone Castellani
- Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, 40138, Bologna, Italy.
| | - Claudia Sala
- Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, 40138, Bologna, Italy
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7
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Romei M, Sapriel G, Imbert P, Jamay T, Chomilier J, Lecointre G, Carpentier M. Protein folds as synapomorphies of the tree of life. Evolution 2022; 76:1706-1719. [PMID: 35765784 PMCID: PMC9541633 DOI: 10.1111/evo.14550] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/06/2021] [Revised: 05/17/2022] [Accepted: 05/31/2022] [Indexed: 01/22/2023]
Abstract
Several studies showed that folds (topology of protein secondary structures) distribution in proteomes may be a global proxy to build phylogeny. Then, some folds should be synapomorphies (derived characters exclusively shared among taxa). However, previous studies used methods that did not allow synapomorphy identification, which requires congruence analysis of folds as individual characters. Here, we map SCOP folds onto a sample of 210 species across the tree of life (TOL). Congruence is assessed using retention index of each fold for the TOL, and principal component analysis for deeper branches. Using a bicluster mapping approach, we define synapomorphic blocks of folds (SBF) sharing similar presence/absence patterns. Among the 1232 folds, 20% are universally present in our TOL, whereas 54% are reliable synapomorphies. These results are similar with CATH and ECOD databases. Eukaryotes are characterized by a large number of them, and several SBFs clearly support nested eukaryotic clades (divergence times from 1100 to 380 mya). Although clearly separated, the three superkingdoms reveal a strong mosaic pattern. This pattern is consistent with the dual origin of eukaryotes and witness secondary endosymbiosis in their phothosynthetic clades. Our study unveils direct analysis of folds synapomorphies as key characters to unravel evolutionary history of species.
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Affiliation(s)
- Martin Romei
- Institut Systématique Evolution Biodiversité (ISYEB UMR 7205)Sorbonne Université, MNHN, CNRS, EPHE, UAParisFrance,IMPMC (UMR 7590), BiBiP, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, MNHNParisFrance
| | - Guillaume Sapriel
- Institut Systématique Evolution Biodiversité (ISYEB UMR 7205)Sorbonne Université, MNHN, CNRS, EPHE, UAParisFrance,UFR des sciences de la santéUniversité Versailles‐St‐QuentinVersaillesFrance
| | - Pierre Imbert
- Institut Systématique Evolution Biodiversité (ISYEB UMR 7205)Sorbonne Université, MNHN, CNRS, EPHE, UAParisFrance
| | - Théo Jamay
- Institut Systématique Evolution Biodiversité (ISYEB UMR 7205)Sorbonne Université, MNHN, CNRS, EPHE, UAParisFrance
| | | | - Guillaume Lecointre
- Institut Systématique Evolution Biodiversité (ISYEB UMR 7205)Sorbonne Université, MNHN, CNRS, EPHE, UAParisFrance
| | - Mathilde Carpentier
- Institut Systématique Evolution Biodiversité (ISYEB UMR 7205)Sorbonne Université, MNHN, CNRS, EPHE, UAParisFrance
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8
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New Genomic Signals Underlying the Emergence of Human Proto-Genes. Genes (Basel) 2022; 13:genes13020284. [PMID: 35205330 PMCID: PMC8871994 DOI: 10.3390/genes13020284] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/17/2021] [Revised: 01/20/2022] [Accepted: 01/24/2022] [Indexed: 12/04/2022] Open
Abstract
De novo genes are novel genes which emerge from non-coding DNA. Until now, little is known about de novo genes’ properties, correlated to their age and mechanisms of emergence. In this study, we investigate four related properties: introns, upstream regulatory motifs, 5′ Untranslated regions (UTRs) and protein domains, in 23,135 human proto-genes. We found that proto-genes contain introns, whose number and position correlates with the genomic position of proto-gene emergence. The origin of these introns is debated, as our results suggest that 41% of proto-genes might have captured existing introns, and 13.7% of them do not splice the ORF. We show that proto-genes which emerged via overprinting tend to be more enriched in core promotor motifs, while intergenic and intronic genes are more enriched in enhancers, even if the TATA motif is most commonly found upstream in these genes. Intergenic and intronic 5′ UTRs of proto-genes have a lower potential to stabilise mRNA structures than exonic proto-genes and established human genes. Finally, we confirm that proteins expressed by proto-genes gain new putative domains with age. Overall, we find that regulatory motifs inducing transcription and translation of previously non-coding sequences may facilitate proto-gene emergence. Our study demonstrates that introns, 5′ UTRs, and domains have specific properties in proto-genes. We also emphasize that the genomic positions of de novo genes strongly impacts these properties.
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9
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Caetano-Anollés G. The Compressed Vocabulary of Microbial Life. Front Microbiol 2021; 12:655990. [PMID: 34305827 PMCID: PMC8292947 DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.655990] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/19/2021] [Accepted: 04/27/2021] [Indexed: 12/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Communication is an undisputed central activity of life that requires an evolving molecular language. It conveys meaning through messages and vocabularies. Here, I explore the existence of a growing vocabulary in the molecules and molecular functions of the microbial world. There are clear correspondences between the lexicon, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of language organization and the module, structure, function, and fitness paradigms of molecular biology. These correspondences are constrained by universal laws and engineering principles. Macromolecular structure, for example, follows quantitative linguistic patterns arising from statistical laws that are likely universal, including the Zipf's law, a special case of the scale-free distribution, the Heaps' law describing sublinear growth typical of economies of scales, and the Menzerath-Altmann's law, which imposes size-dependent patterns of decreasing returns. Trade-off solutions between principles of economy, flexibility, and robustness define a "triangle of persistence" describing the impact of the environment on a biological system. The pragmatic landscape of the triangle interfaces with the syntax and semantics of molecular languages, which together with comparative and evolutionary genomic data can explain global patterns of diversification of cellular life. The vocabularies of proteins (proteomes) and functions (functionomes) revealed a significant universal lexical core supporting a universal common ancestor, an ancestral evolutionary link between Bacteria and Eukarya, and distinct reductive evolutionary strategies of language compression in Archaea and Bacteria. A "causal" word cloud strategy inspired by the dependency grammar paradigm used in catenae unfolded the evolution of lexical units associated with Gene Ontology terms at different levels of ontological abstraction. While Archaea holds the smallest, oldest, and most homogeneous vocabulary of all superkingdoms, Bacteria heterogeneously apportions a more complex vocabulary, and Eukarya pushes functional innovation through mechanisms of flexibility and robustness.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, and C. R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, United States
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10
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Nasir A, Mughal F, Caetano-Anollés G. The tree of life describes a tripartite cellular world. Bioessays 2021; 43:e2000343. [PMID: 33837594 DOI: 10.1002/bies.202000343] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/25/2020] [Revised: 03/11/2021] [Accepted: 03/15/2021] [Indexed: 12/28/2022]
Abstract
The canonical view of a 3-domain (3D) tree of life was recently challenged by the discovery of Asgardarchaeota encoding eukaryote signature proteins (ESPs), which were treated as missing links of a 2-domain (2D) tree. Here we revisit the debate. We discuss methodological limitations of building trees with alignment-dependent approaches, which often fail to satisfactorily address the problem of ''gaps.'' In addition, most phylogenies are reconstructed unrooted, neglecting the power of direct rooting methods. Alignment-free methodologies lift most difficulties but require employing realistic evolutionary models. We argue that the discoveries of Asgards and ESPs, by themselves, do not rule out the 3D tree, which is strongly supported by comparative and evolutionary genomic analyses and vast genomic and biochemical superkingdom distinctions. Given uncertainties of retrodiction and interpretation difficulties, we conclude that the 3D view has not been falsified but instead has been strengthened by genomic analyses. In turn, the objections to the 2D model have not been lifted. The debate remains open. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/-6TBN0bubI8.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arshan Nasir
- Theoretical Biology and Biophysics (T-6), Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
| | - Fizza Mughal
- Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA
| | - Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA
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11
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Searching protein space for ancient sub-domain segments. Curr Opin Struct Biol 2021; 68:105-112. [PMID: 33476896 DOI: 10.1016/j.sbi.2020.11.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/11/2020] [Accepted: 11/29/2020] [Indexed: 01/08/2023]
Abstract
Evolutionary processes that formed the current protein universe left their traces, among them homologous segments that recur, or are 'reused,' in multiple proteins. These reused segments, called 'themes,' can be found at various scales, the best known of which is the domain. Yet, recent studies have begun to focus on the evolutionary insights that can be derived from sub-domain-scale themes, which are candidates for traces of more ancient events. Characterizing these may provide clues to the emergence of domains. Particularly interesting are themes that are reused across dissimilar contexts, that is, where the rest of the protein domain differs. We survey computational studies identifying reused themes within different contexts at the sub-domain level.
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12
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Harris HMB, Hill C. A Place for Viruses on the Tree of Life. Front Microbiol 2021; 11:604048. [PMID: 33519747 PMCID: PMC7840587 DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2020.604048] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/10/2020] [Accepted: 12/14/2020] [Indexed: 12/15/2022] Open
Abstract
Viruses are ubiquitous. They infect almost every species and are probably the most abundant biological entities on the planet, yet they are excluded from the Tree of Life (ToL). However, there can be no doubt that viruses play a significant role in evolution, the force that facilitates all life on Earth. Conceptually, viruses are regarded by many as non-living entities that hijack living cells in order to propagate. A strict separation between living and non-living entities places viruses far from the ToL, but this may be theoretically unsound. Advances in sequencing technology and comparative genomics have expanded our understanding of the evolutionary relationships between viruses and cellular organisms. Genomic and metagenomic data have revealed that co-evolution between viral and cellular genomes involves frequent horizontal gene transfer and the occasional co-option of novel functions over evolutionary time. From the giant, ameba-infecting marine viruses to the tiny Porcine circovirus harboring only two genes, viruses and their cellular hosts are ecologically and evolutionarily intertwined. When deciding how, if, and where viruses should be placed on the ToL, we should remember that the Tree functions best as a model of biological evolution on Earth, and it is important that models themselves evolve with our increasing understanding of biological systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hugh M B Harris
- APC Microbiome Ireland, College of Medicine and Health, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
| | - Colin Hill
- APC Microbiome Ireland, College of Medicine and Health, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.,School of Microbiology, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
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13
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Nasir A, Romero-Severson E, Claverie JM. Investigating the Concept and Origin of Viruses. Trends Microbiol 2020; 28:959-967. [PMID: 33158732 PMCID: PMC7609044 DOI: 10.1016/j.tim.2020.08.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 37] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/29/2020] [Revised: 08/25/2020] [Accepted: 08/27/2020] [Indexed: 12/21/2022]
Abstract
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has piqued public interest in the properties, evolution, and emergence of viruses. Here, we discuss how these basic questions have surprisingly remained disputed despite being increasingly within the reach of scientific analysis. We review recent data-driven efforts that shed light into the origin and evolution of viruses and explain factors that resist the widespread acceptance of new views and insights. We propose a new definition of viruses that is not restricted to the presence or absence of any genetic or physical feature, detail a scenario for how viruses likely originated from ancient cells, and explain technical and conceptual biases that limit our understanding of virus evolution. We note that the philosophical aspects of virus evolution also impact the way we might prepare for future outbreaks.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arshan Nasir
- Theoretical Biology and Biophysics (T-6), Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA.
| | - Ethan Romero-Severson
- Theoretical Biology and Biophysics (T-6), Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA
| | - Jean-Michel Claverie
- Aix Marseille University, CNRS, IGS, Structural and Genomic Information Laboratory (UMR7256), Mediterranean Institute of Microbiology (FR3479), Marseille, France
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14
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Defosset A, Kress A, Nevers Y, Ripp R, Thompson JD, Poch O, Lecompte O. Proteome-Scale Detection of Differential Conservation Patterns at Protein and Subprotein Levels with BLUR. Genome Biol Evol 2020; 13:5991441. [PMID: 33211099 PMCID: PMC7851591 DOI: 10.1093/gbe/evaa248] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 11/18/2020] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
In the multiomics era, comparative genomics studies based on gene repertoire comparison are increasingly used to investigate evolutionary histories of species, to study genotype–phenotype relations, species adaptation to various environments, or to predict gene function using phylogenetic profiling. However, comparisons of orthologs have highlighted the prevalence of sequence plasticity among species, showing the benefits of combining protein and subprotein levels of analysis to allow for a more comprehensive study of genotype/phenotype correlations. In this article, we introduce a new approach called BLUR (BLAST Unexpected Ranking), capable of detecting genotype divergence or specialization between two related clades at different levels: gain/loss of proteins but also of subprotein regions. These regions can correspond to known domains, uncharacterized regions, or even small motifs. Our method was created to allow two types of research strategies: 1) the comparison of two groups of species with no previous knowledge, with the aim of predicting phenotype differences or specializations between close species or 2) the study of specific phenotypes by comparing species that present the phenotype of interest with species that do not. We designed a website to facilitate the use of BLUR with a possibility of in-depth analysis of the results with various tools, such as functional enrichments, protein–protein interaction networks, and multiple sequence alignments. We applied our method to the study of two different biological pathways and to the comparison of several groups of close species, all with very promising results. BLUR is freely available at http://lbgi.fr/blur/.
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Affiliation(s)
- Audrey Defosset
- Complex Systems and Translational Bioinformatics, ICube UMR 7357, Université de Strasbourg, France
| | - Arnaud Kress
- Complex Systems and Translational Bioinformatics, ICube UMR 7357, Université de Strasbourg, France
| | - Yannis Nevers
- Complex Systems and Translational Bioinformatics, ICube UMR 7357, Université de Strasbourg, France.,SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Lausanne, Switzerland.,Department of Computational Biology, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.,Center for Integrative Genomics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
| | - Raymond Ripp
- Complex Systems and Translational Bioinformatics, ICube UMR 7357, Université de Strasbourg, France
| | - Julie D Thompson
- Complex Systems and Translational Bioinformatics, ICube UMR 7357, Université de Strasbourg, France
| | - Olivier Poch
- Complex Systems and Translational Bioinformatics, ICube UMR 7357, Université de Strasbourg, France
| | - Odile Lecompte
- Complex Systems and Translational Bioinformatics, ICube UMR 7357, Université de Strasbourg, France
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15
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Yadav A, Fernández-Baca D, Cannon SB. Family-Specific Gains and Losses of Protein Domains in the Legume and Grass Plant Families. Evol Bioinform Online 2020; 16:1176934320939943. [PMID: 32694909 PMCID: PMC7350399 DOI: 10.1177/1176934320939943] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2020] [Accepted: 06/15/2020] [Indexed: 11/27/2022] Open
Abstract
Protein domains can be regarded as sections of protein sequences capable of folding independently and performing specific functions. In addition to amino-acid level changes, protein sequences can also evolve through domain shuffling events such as domain insertion, deletion, or duplication. The evolution of protein domains can be studied by tracking domain changes in a selected set of species with known phylogenetic relationships. Here, we conduct such an analysis by defining domains as “features” or “descriptors,” and considering the species (target + outgroup) as instances or data-points in a data matrix. We then look for features (domains) that are significantly different between the target species and the outgroup species. We study the domain changes in 2 large, distinct groups of plant species: legumes (Fabaceae) and grasses (Poaceae), with respect to selected outgroup species. We evaluate 4 types of domain feature matrices: domain content, domain duplication, domain abundance, and domain versatility. The 4 types of domain feature matrices attempt to capture different aspects of domain changes through which the protein sequences may evolve—that is, via gain or loss of domains, increase or decrease in the copy number of domains along the sequences, expansion or contraction of domains, or through changes in the number of adjacent domain partners. All the feature matrices were analyzed using feature selection techniques and statistical tests to select protein domains that have significant different feature values in legumes and grasses. We report the biological functions of the top selected domains from the analysis of all the feature matrices. In addition, we also perform domain-centric gene ontology (dcGO) enrichment analysis on all selected domains from all 4 feature matrices to study the gene ontology terms associated with the significantly evolving domains in legumes and grasses. Domain content analysis revealed a striking loss of protein domains from the Fanconi anemia (FA) pathway, the pathway responsible for the repair of interstrand DNA crosslinks. The abundance analysis of domains found in legumes revealed an increase in glutathione synthase enzyme, an antioxidant required from nitrogen fixation, and a decrease in xanthine oxidizing enzymes, a phenomenon confirmed by previous studies. In grasses, the abundance analysis showed increases in domains related to gene silencing which could be due to polyploidy or due to enhanced response to viral infection. We provide a docker container that can be used to perform this analysis workflow on any user-defined sets of species, available at https://cloud.docker.com/u/akshayayadav/repository/docker/akshayayadav/protein-domain-evolution-project.
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Affiliation(s)
- Akshay Yadav
- Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Graduate Program, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA
| | | | - Steven B Cannon
- Corn Insects and Crop Genetics Research Unit, USDA-Agricultural Research Service, Ames, IA, USA
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16
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Bokhari RH, Amirjan N, Jeong H, Kim KM, Caetano-Anollés G, Nasir A. Bacterial Origin and Reductive Evolution of the CPR Group. Genome Biol Evol 2020; 12:103-121. [PMID: 32031619 PMCID: PMC7093835 DOI: 10.1093/gbe/evaa024] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 01/31/2020] [Indexed: 12/24/2022] Open
Abstract
The candidate phyla radiation (CPR) is a proposed subdivision within the bacterial domain comprising several candidate phyla. CPR organisms are united by small genome and physical sizes, lack several metabolic enzymes, and populate deep branches within the bacterial subtree of life. These features raise intriguing questions regarding their origin and mode of evolution. In this study, we performed a comparative and phylogenomic analysis to investigate CPR origin and evolution. Unlike previous gene/protein sequence-based reports of CPR evolution, we used protein domain superfamilies classified by protein structure databases to resolve the evolutionary relationships of CPR with non-CPR bacteria, Archaea, Eukarya, and viruses. Across all supergroups, CPR shared maximum superfamilies with non-CPR bacteria and were placed as deep branching bacteria in most phylogenomic trees. CPR contributed 1.22% of new superfamilies to bacteria including the ribosomal protein L19e and encoded four core superfamilies that are likely involved in cell-to-cell interaction and establishing episymbiotic lifestyles. Although CPR and non-CPR bacterial proteomes gained common superfamilies over the course of evolution, CPR and Archaea had more common losses. These losses mostly involved metabolic superfamilies. In fact, phylogenies built from only metabolic protein superfamilies separated CPR and non-CPR bacteria. These findings indicate that CPR are bacterial organisms that have probably evolved in an Archaea-like manner via the early loss of metabolic functions. We also discovered that phylogenies built from metabolic and informational superfamilies gave contrasting views of the groupings among Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya, which add to the current debate on the evolutionary relationships among superkingdoms.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Nooreen Amirjan
- Department of Biosciences, COMSATS University Islamabad, Pakistan
| | - Hyeonsoo Jeong
- School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
| | - Kyung Mo Kim
- Division of Polar Life Sciences, Korea Polar Research Institute, Incheon, Republic of Korea
| | - Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana
| | - Arshan Nasir
- Department of Biosciences, COMSATS University Islamabad, Pakistan
- Theoretical Biology & Biophysics Group, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico
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17
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Mughal F, Caetano-Anollés G. MANET 3.0: Hierarchy and modularity in evolving metabolic networks. PLoS One 2019; 14:e0224201. [PMID: 31648227 PMCID: PMC6812854 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0224201] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/14/2019] [Accepted: 10/08/2019] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Enzyme recruitment is a fundamental evolutionary driver of modern metabolism. We see evidence of recruitment at work in the metabolic Molecular Ancestry Networks (MANET) database, an online resource that integrates data from KEGG, SCOP and structural phylogenomic reconstruction. The database, which was introduced in 2006, traces the deep history of the structural domains of enzymes in metabolic pathways. Here we release version 3.0 of MANET, which updates data from KEGG and SCOP, links enzyme and PDB information with PDBsum, and traces evolutionary information of domains defined at fold family level of SCOP classification in metabolic subnetwork diagrams. Compared to SCOP folds used in the previous versions, fold families are cohesive units of functional similarity that are highly conserved at sequence level and offer a 10-fold increase of data entries. We surveyed enzymatic, functional and catalytic site distributions among superkingdoms showing that ancient enzymatic innovations followed a biphasic temporal pattern of diversification typical of module innovation. We grouped enzymatic activities of MANET into a hierarchical system of subnetworks and mesonetworks matching KEGG classification. The evolutionary growth of these modules of metabolic activity was studied using bipartite networks and their one-mode projections at enzyme, subnetwork and mesonetwork levels of organization. Evolving metabolic networks revealed patterns of enzyme sharing that transcended mesonetwork boundaries and supported the patchwork model of metabolic evolution. We also explored the scale-freeness, randomness and small-world properties of evolving networks as possible organizing principles of network growth and diversification. The network structure shows an increase in hierarchical modularity and scale-free behavior as metabolic networks unfold in evolutionary time. Remarkably, this evolutionary constraint on structure was stronger at lower levels of metabolic organization. Evolving metabolic structure reveals a 'principle of granularity', an evolutionary increase of the cohesiveness of lower-level parts of a hierarchical system. MANET is available at http://manet.illinois.edu.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fizza Mughal
- Illinois Informatics Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America
| | - Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Illinois Informatics Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America
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18
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Deryusheva EI, Machulin AV, Matyunin MA, Galzitskaya OV. Investigation of the Relationship between the S1 Domain and Its Molecular Functions Derived from Studies of the Tertiary Structure. Molecules 2019; 24:E3681. [PMID: 31614904 PMCID: PMC6832287 DOI: 10.3390/molecules24203681] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2019] [Accepted: 10/11/2019] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
S1 domain, a structural variant of one of the "oldest" OB-folds (oligonucleotide/oligosaccharide-binding fold), is widespread in various proteins in three domains of life: Bacteria, Eukaryotes, and Archaea. In this study, it was shown that S1 domains of bacterial, eukaryotic, and archaeal proteins have a low percentage of identity, which indicates the uniqueness of the scaffold and is associated with protein functions. Assessment of the predisposition of tertiary flexibility of S1 domains using computational and statistical tools showed similar structural features and revealed functional flexible regions that are potentially involved in the interaction of natural binding partners. In addition, we analyzed the relative number and distribution of S1 domains in all domains of life and established specific features based on sequences and structures associated with molecular functions. The results correlate with the presence of repeats of the S1 domain in proteins containing the S1 domain in the range from one (bacterial and archaeal) to 15 (eukaryotic) and, apparently, are associated with the need for individual proteins to increase the affinity and specificity of protein binding to ligands.
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Affiliation(s)
- Evgenia I Deryusheva
- Institute for Biological Instrumentation, Federal Research Center "Pushchino Scientific Center for Biological Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences", 142290 Pushchino, Moscow Region, Russia.
| | - Andrey V Machulin
- Skryabin Institute of Biochemistry and Physiology of Microorganisms, Russian Academy of Sciences, Federal Research Center "Pushchino Scientific Center for Biological Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences", 142290 Pushchino, Moscow Region, Russia.
| | - Maxim A Matyunin
- Institute of Protein Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, 142290 Pushchino, Moscow Region, Russia.
| | - Oxana V Galzitskaya
- Institute of Protein Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, 142290 Pushchino, Moscow Region, Russia.
- Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics, Russian Academy of Sciences, 142290 Pushchino, Moscow Region, Russia.
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19
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Caetano-Anollés D, Nasir A, Kim KM, Caetano-Anollés G. Testing Empirical Support for Evolutionary Models that Root the Tree of Life. J Mol Evol 2019; 87:131-142. [PMID: 30887086 PMCID: PMC6443624 DOI: 10.1007/s00239-019-09891-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/10/2018] [Accepted: 03/06/2019] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
Trees of life (ToLs) can only be rooted with direct methods that seek optimization of character state information in ingroup taxa. This involves optimizing phylogenetic tree, model and data in an exercise of reciprocal illumination. Rooted ToLs have been built from a census of protein structural domains in proteomes using two kinds of models. Fully-reversible models use standard-ordered (additive) characters and Wagner parsimony to generate unrooted trees of proteomes that are then rooted with Weston's generality criterion. Non-reversible models directly build rooted trees with unordered characters and asymmetric stepmatrices of transformation costs that penalize gain over loss of domains. Here, we test the empirical support for the evolutionary models with character state reconstruction methods using two published proteomic datasets. We show that the reversible models match reconstructed frequencies of character change and are faithful to the distribution of serial homologies in trees. In contrast, the non-reversible models go counter to trends in the data they must explain, attracting organisms with large proteomes to the base of the rooted trees while violating the triangle inequality of distances. This can lead to serious reconstruction inconsistencies that show model inadequacy. Our study highlights the aprioristic perils of disposing of countering evidence in natural history reconstruction.
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Affiliation(s)
- Derek Caetano-Anollés
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionsbiologie, Plön, Germany.
| | - Arshan Nasir
- Department of Biosciences, COMSATS University, Islamabad, 45550, Pakistan
| | - Kyung Mo Kim
- Division of Polar Life Sciences, Korea Polar Research Institute, Incheon, Republic of Korea
| | - Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, and Illinois Informatics Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA
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20
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Abstract
This chapter reviews current research on how protein domain architectures evolve. We begin by summarizing work on the phylogenetic distribution of proteins, as this will directly impact which domain architectures can be formed in different species. Studies relating domain family size to occurrence have shown that they generally follow power law distributions, both within genomes and larger evolutionary groups. These findings were subsequently extended to multi-domain architectures. Genome evolution models that have been suggested to explain the shape of these distributions are reviewed, as well as evidence for selective pressure to expand certain domain families more than others. Each domain has an intrinsic combinatorial propensity, and the effects of this have been studied using measures of domain versatility or promiscuity. Next, we study the principles of protein domain architecture evolution and how these have been inferred from distributions of extant domain arrangements. Following this, we review inferences of ancestral domain architecture and the conclusions concerning domain architecture evolution mechanisms that can be drawn from these. Finally, we examine whether all known cases of a given domain architecture can be assumed to have a single common origin (monophyly) or have evolved convergently (polyphyly). We end by a discussion of some available tools for computational analysis or exploitation of protein domain architectures and their evolution.
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21
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Caetano-Anollés G, Nasir A, Kim KM, Caetano-Anollés D. Rooting Phylogenies and the Tree of Life While Minimizing Ad Hoc and Auxiliary Assumptions. Evol Bioinform Online 2018; 14:1176934318805101. [PMID: 30364468 PMCID: PMC6196624 DOI: 10.1177/1176934318805101] [Citation(s) in RCA: 38] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/25/2018] [Accepted: 09/05/2018] [Indexed: 12/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Phylogenetic methods unearth evolutionary history when supported by three starting points of reason: (1) the continuity axiom begs the existence of a "model" of evolutionary change, (2) the singularity axiom defines the historical ground plan (phylogeny) in which biological entities (taxa) evolve, and (3) the memory axiom demands identification of biological attributes (characters) with historical information. Axiom consequences are interlinked, making the retrodiction enterprise an endeavor of reciprocal fulfillment. In particular, establishing direction of evolutionary change (character polarization) roots phylogenies and enables testing the existence of historical memory (homology). Unfortunately, rooting phylogenies, especially the "tree of life," generally follow narratives instead of integrating empirical and theoretical knowledge of retrodictive exploration. This stems mostly from a focus on molecular sequence analysis and uncertainties about rooting methods. Here, we review available rooting criteria, highlighting the need to minimize both ad hoc and auxiliary assumptions, especially argumentative ad hocness. We show that while the outgroup comparison method has been widely adopted, the generality criterion of nesting and additive phylogenetic change embodied in Weston rule offers the most powerful rooting approach. We also propose a change of focus, from phylogenies that describe the evolution of biological systems to those that describe the evolution of parts of those systems. This weakens violation of character independence, helps formalize the generality criterion of rooting, and provides new ways to study the problem of evolution.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
| | - Arshan Nasir
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA
- Department of Biosciences, COMSATS University Islamabad, Islamabad, Pakistan
| | - Kyung Mo Kim
- Division of Polar Life Sciences, Korea Polar Research Institute, Incheon, Republic of Korea
| | - Derek Caetano-Anollés
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionsbiologie, Plön, Germany
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22
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Caetano-Anollés D, Caetano-Anollés K, Caetano-Anollés G. Evolution of macromolecular structure: a 'double tale' of biological accretion and diversification. Sci Prog 2018; 101:360-383. [PMID: 30296968 PMCID: PMC10365222 DOI: 10.3184/003685018x15379391431599] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/10/2023]
Abstract
The evolution of structure in biology is driven by accretion and diversification. Accretion brings together disparate parts to form bigger wholes. Diversification provides opportunities for growth and innovation. Here, we review patterns and processes that are responsible for a 'double tale' of accretion and diversification at various levels of complexity, from proteins and nucleic acids to high-rise building structures in cities. Parts are at first weakly linked and associate variously. As they diversify, they compete with each other and are selected for performance. The emerging interactions constrain their structure and associations. This causes parts to self-organise into modules with tight linkage. In a second phase, variants of the modules evolve and become new parts for a new generative cycle of higher-level organisation. Evolutionary genomics and network biology support the 'double tale' of structural module creation and validate an evolutionary principle of maximum abundance that drives the gain and loss of modules.
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Affiliation(s)
- Derek Caetano-Anollés
- Department of Evolutionary Genetics of the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön, Germany. Developmental Biology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
| | - Kelsey Caetano-Anollés
- Division of Biomedical Informatics of Seoul National University College of Medicine, Republic of Korea. Animal Sciences from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
| | - Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Department of Crop Sciences and Affiliate of the C.R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. University of La Plata in Argentina
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23
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Staley JT, Caetano-Anollés G. Archaea-First and the Co-Evolutionary Diversification of Domains of Life. Bioessays 2018; 40:e1800036. [PMID: 29944192 DOI: 10.1002/bies.201800036] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/19/2018] [Revised: 05/12/2018] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
Abstract
The origins and evolution of the Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya remain controversial. Phylogenomic-wide studies of molecular features that are evolutionarily conserved, such as protein structural domains, suggest Archaea is the first domain of life to diversify from a stem line of descent. This line embodies the last universal common ancestor of cellular life. Here, we propose that ancestors of Euryarchaeota co-evolved with those of Bacteria prior to the diversification of Eukarya. This co-evolutionary scenario is supported by comparative genomic and phylogenomic analyses of the distributions of fold families of domains in the proteomes of free-living organisms, which show horizontal gene recruitments and informational process homologies. It also benefits from the molecular study of cell physiologies responsible for membrane phospholipids, methanogenesis, methane oxidation, cell division, gas vesicles, and the cell wall. Our theory however challenges popular cell fusion and two-domain of life scenarios derived from sequence analysis, demanding phylogenetic reconciliation. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/9yVWn_Q9faY.
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Affiliation(s)
- James T Staley
- Department of Microbiology and Astrobiology Program, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA
| | - Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Department of Crop Sciences, C. R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA
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24
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Shapiro JA. Living Organisms Author Their Read-Write Genomes in Evolution. BIOLOGY 2017; 6:E42. [PMID: 29211049 PMCID: PMC5745447 DOI: 10.3390/biology6040042] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/23/2017] [Revised: 11/17/2017] [Accepted: 11/28/2017] [Indexed: 12/18/2022]
Abstract
Evolutionary variations generating phenotypic adaptations and novel taxa resulted from complex cellular activities altering genome content and expression: (i) Symbiogenetic cell mergers producing the mitochondrion-bearing ancestor of eukaryotes and chloroplast-bearing ancestors of photosynthetic eukaryotes; (ii) interspecific hybridizations and genome doublings generating new species and adaptive radiations of higher plants and animals; and, (iii) interspecific horizontal DNA transfer encoding virtually all of the cellular functions between organisms and their viruses in all domains of life. Consequently, assuming that evolutionary processes occur in isolated genomes of individual species has become an unrealistic abstraction. Adaptive variations also involved natural genetic engineering of mobile DNA elements to rewire regulatory networks. In the most highly evolved organisms, biological complexity scales with "non-coding" DNA content more closely than with protein-coding capacity. Coincidentally, we have learned how so-called "non-coding" RNAs that are rich in repetitive mobile DNA sequences are key regulators of complex phenotypes. Both biotic and abiotic ecological challenges serve as triggers for episodes of elevated genome change. The intersections of cell activities, biosphere interactions, horizontal DNA transfers, and non-random Read-Write genome modifications by natural genetic engineering provide a rich molecular and biological foundation for understanding how ecological disruptions can stimulate productive, often abrupt, evolutionary transformations.
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Affiliation(s)
- James A Shapiro
- Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Chicago GCIS W123B, 979 E. 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
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25
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A proteome view of structural, functional, and taxonomic characteristics of major protein domain clusters. Sci Rep 2017; 7:14210. [PMID: 29079755 PMCID: PMC5660162 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-13297-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/18/2016] [Accepted: 09/21/2017] [Indexed: 12/28/2022] Open
Abstract
Proteome-scale bioinformatics research is increasingly conducted as the number of completely sequenced genomes increases, but analysis of protein domains (PDs) usually relies on similarity in their amino acid sequences and/or three-dimensional structures. Here, we present results from a bi-clustering analysis on presence/absence data for 6,580 unique PDs in 2,134 species with a sequenced genome, thus covering a complete set of proteins, for the three superkingdoms of life, Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya. Our analysis revealed eight distinctive PD clusters, which, following an analysis of enrichment of Gene Ontology functions and CATH classification of protein structures, were shown to exhibit structural and functional properties that are taxa-characteristic. For examples, the largest cluster is ubiquitous in all three superkingdoms, constituting a set of 1,472 persistent domains created early in evolution and retained in living organisms and characterized by basic cellular functions and ancient structural architectures, while an Archaea and Eukarya bi-superkingdom cluster suggests its PDs may have existed in the ancestor of the two superkingdoms, and others are single superkingdom- or taxa (e.g. Fungi)-specific. These results contribute to increase our appreciation of PD diversity and our knowledge of how PDs are used in species, yielding implications on species evolution.
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26
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Laurie J, Chattopadhyay AK, Flower DR. Protein lipograms. J Theor Biol 2017; 430:109-116. [PMID: 28716385 DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2017.07.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/10/2017] [Revised: 06/30/2017] [Accepted: 07/12/2017] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
Abstract
Linguistic analysis of protein sequences is an underexploited technique. Here, we capitalize on the concept of the lipogram to characterize sequences at the proteome levels. A lipogram is a literary composition which omits one or more letters. A protein lipogram likewise omits one or more types of amino acid. In this article, we establish a usable terminology for the decomposition of a sequence collection in terms of the lipogram. Next, we characterize Uniref50 using a lipogram decomposition. At the global level, protein lipograms exhibit power-law properties. A clear correlation with metabolic cost is seen. Finally, we use the lipogram construction to assign proteomes to the four branches of the tree-of-life: archaea, bacteria, eukaryotes and viruses. We conclude from this pilot study that the lipogram demonstrates considerable potential as an additional tool for sequence analysis and proteome classification.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jason Laurie
- School of Engineering and Applied Science, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK; Systems Analytics Research Institute, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK
| | - Amit K Chattopadhyay
- School of Engineering and Applied Science, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK; Systems Analytics Research Institute, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK
| | - Darren R Flower
- School of Life and Health Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK.
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27
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Leuenberger P, Ganscha S, Kahraman A, Cappelletti V, Boersema PJ, von Mering C, Claassen M, Picotti P. Cell-wide analysis of protein thermal unfolding reveals determinants of thermostability. Science 2017; 355:355/6327/eaai7825. [PMID: 28232526 DOI: 10.1126/science.aai7825] [Citation(s) in RCA: 255] [Impact Index Per Article: 36.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/18/2016] [Accepted: 01/12/2017] [Indexed: 12/14/2022]
Abstract
Temperature-induced cell death is thought to be due to protein denaturation, but the determinants of thermal sensitivity of proteomes remain largely uncharacterized. We developed a structural proteomic strategy to measure protein thermostability on a proteome-wide scale and with domain-level resolution. We applied it to Escherichia coli, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Thermus thermophilus, and human cells, yielding thermostability data for more than 8000 proteins. Our results (i) indicate that temperature-induced cellular collapse is due to the loss of a subset of proteins with key functions, (ii) shed light on the evolutionary conservation of protein and domain stability, and (iii) suggest that natively disordered proteins in a cell are less prevalent than predicted and (iv) that highly expressed proteins are stable because they are designed to tolerate translational errors that would lead to the accumulation of toxic misfolded species.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pascal Leuenberger
- Institute of Biochemistry, Department of Biology, ETH Zurich (ETHZ), CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland.,Systems Biology Graduate School PhD Program, ETHZ and University of Zurich, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Stefan Ganscha
- Systems Biology Graduate School PhD Program, ETHZ and University of Zurich, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland.,Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, Department of Biology, ETHZ, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Abdullah Kahraman
- Institute of Molecular Life Sciences and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, University of Zurich, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Valentina Cappelletti
- Institute of Biochemistry, Department of Biology, ETH Zurich (ETHZ), CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Paul J Boersema
- Institute of Biochemistry, Department of Biology, ETH Zurich (ETHZ), CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Christian von Mering
- Institute of Molecular Life Sciences and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, University of Zurich, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Manfred Claassen
- Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, Department of Biology, ETHZ, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Paola Picotti
- Institute of Biochemistry, Department of Biology, ETH Zurich (ETHZ), CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland.
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Eggermont L, Verstraeten B, Van Damme EJM. Genome-Wide Screening for Lectin Motifs in Arabidopsis thaliana. THE PLANT GENOME 2017; 10. [PMID: 28724081 DOI: 10.3835/plantgenome2017.02.0010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/11/2023]
Abstract
For more than three decades, served as a model for plant biology research. At present only a few protein families have been studied in detail in . This study focused on all sequences with lectin motifs in the genome of . Based on amino acid sequence similarity (BLASTp searches), 217 putative lectin genes were retrieved belonging to 9 out of 12 different lectin families. The domain organization and genomic distribution for each lectin family were analyzed. Domain architecture analysis revealed that most of these lectin gene sequences are linked to other domains, often belonging to protein families with catalytic activity. Many protein domains identified are known to play a role in stress signaling and defense, suggesting a major contribution of the putative lectins in development and plant defense. This genome-wide screen for different lectin motifs will help to unravel the functional characteristics of lectins. In addition, phylogenetic trees and WebLogos were created and showed that most lectin sequences that share the same domain architecture evolved together. Furthermore, the amino acids responsible for carbohydrate binding are largely conserved. Our results provide information about the evolutionary relationships and functional divergence of the lectin motifs in .
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Nasir A, Kim KM, Caetano-Anollés G. Phylogenetic Tracings of Proteome Size Support the Gradual Accretion of Protein Structural Domains and the Early Origin of Viruses from Primordial Cells. Front Microbiol 2017; 8:1178. [PMID: 28690608 PMCID: PMC5481351 DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2017.01178] [Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/27/2017] [Accepted: 06/09/2017] [Indexed: 01/05/2023] Open
Abstract
Untangling the origin and evolution of viruses remains a challenging proposition. We recently studied the global distribution of protein domain structures in thousands of completely sequenced viral and cellular proteomes with comparative genomics, phylogenomics, and multidimensional scaling methods. A tree of life describing the evolution of proteomes revealed viruses emerging from the base of the tree as a fourth supergroup of life. A tree of domains indicated an early origin of modern viral lineages from ancient cells that co-existed with the cellular ancestors. However, it was recently argued that the rooting of our trees and the basal placement of viruses was artifactually induced by small genome (proteome) size. Here we show that these claims arise from misunderstanding and misinterpretations of cladistic methodology. Trees are reconstructed unrooted, and thus, their topologies cannot be distorted a posteriori by the rooting methodology. Tracing proteome size in trees and multidimensional views of evolutionary relationships as well as tests of leaf stability and exclusion/inclusion of taxa demonstrated that the smallest proteomes were neither attracted toward the root nor caused any topological distortions of the trees. Simulations confirmed that taxa clustering patterns were independent of proteome size and were determined by the presence of known evolutionary relatives in data matrices, highlighting the need for broader taxon sampling in phylogeny reconstruction. Instead, phylogenetic tracings of proteome size revealed a slowdown in innovation of the structural domain vocabulary and four regimes of allometric scaling that reflected a Heaps law. These regimes explained increasing economies of scale in the evolutionary growth and accretion of kernel proteome repertoires of viruses and cellular organisms that resemble growth of human languages with limited vocabulary sizes. Results reconcile dynamic and static views of domain frequency distributions that are consistent with the axiom of spatiotemporal continuity that is tenet of evolutionary thinking.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arshan Nasir
- Department of Biosciences, COMSATS Institute of Information TechnologyIslamabad, Pakistan
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignUrbana, IL, United States
| | - Kyung Mo Kim
- Division of Polar Life Sciences, Korea Polar Research InstituteIncheon, South Korea
| | - Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignUrbana, IL, United States
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30
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Koç I, Caetano-Anollés G. The natural history of molecular functions inferred from an extensive phylogenomic analysis of gene ontology data. PLoS One 2017; 12:e0176129. [PMID: 28467492 PMCID: PMC5414959 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176129] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2016] [Accepted: 04/05/2017] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
The origin and natural history of molecular functions hold the key to the emergence of cellular organization and modern biochemistry. Here we use a genomic census of Gene Ontology (GO) terms to reconstruct phylogenies at the three highest (1, 2 and 3) and the lowest (terminal) levels of the hierarchy of molecular functions, which reflect the broadest and the most specific GO definitions, respectively. These phylogenies define evolutionary timelines of functional innovation. We analyzed 249 free-living organisms comprising the three superkingdoms of life, Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya. Phylogenies indicate catalytic, binding and transport functions were the oldest, suggesting a 'metabolism-first' origin scenario for biochemistry. Metabolism made use of increasingly complicated organic chemistry. Primordial features of ancient molecular functions and functional recruitments were further distilled by studying the oldest child terms of the oldest level 1 GO definitions. Network analyses showed the existence of an hourglass pattern of enzyme recruitment in the molecular functions of the directed acyclic graph of molecular functions. Older high-level molecular functions were thoroughly recruited at younger lower levels, while very young high-level functions were used throughout the timeline. This pattern repeated in every one of the three mappings, which gave a criss-cross pattern. The timelines and their mappings were remarkable. They revealed the progressive evolutionary development of functional toolkits, starting with the early rise of metabolic activities, followed chronologically by the rise of macromolecular biosynthesis, the establishment of controlled interactions with the environment and self, adaptation to oxygen, and enzyme coordinated regulation, and ending with the rise of structural and cellular complexity. This historical account holds important clues for dissection of the emergence of biomcomplexity and life.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ibrahim Koç
- Molecular Biology and Genetics, Gebze Technical University, Kocaeli, Turkey
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States of America
| | - Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States of America
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31
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Staley JT, Fuerst JA. Ancient, highly conserved proteins from a LUCA with complex cell biology provide evidence in support of the nuclear compartment commonality (NuCom) hypothesis. Res Microbiol 2017; 168:395-412. [PMID: 28111289 DOI: 10.1016/j.resmic.2017.01.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/24/2016] [Revised: 01/08/2017] [Accepted: 01/09/2017] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
Abstract
The nuclear compartment commonality (NuCom) hypothesis posits a complex last common ancestor (LUCA) with membranous compartments including a nuclear membrane. Such a LUCA then evolved to produce two nucleated lineages of the tree of life: the Planctomycetes-Verrucomicrobia-Chlamydia superphylum (PVC) within the Bacteria, and the Eukarya. We propose that a group of ancient essential protokaryotic signature proteins (PSPs) originating in LUCA were incorporated into ancestors of PVC Bacteria and Eukarya. Tubulins, ubiquitin system enzymes and sterol-synthesizing enzymes are consistent with early origins of these features shared between the PVC superphylum and Eukarya.
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Affiliation(s)
- James T Staley
- Department of Microbiology and Astrobiology Program, University of Washington, Seattle 98195, USA
| | - John A Fuerst
- School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia.
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Arguments Reinforcing the Three-Domain View of Diversified Cellular Life. ARCHAEA-AN INTERNATIONAL MICROBIOLOGICAL JOURNAL 2016; 2016:1851865. [PMID: 28050162 PMCID: PMC5165138 DOI: 10.1155/2016/1851865] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/16/2016] [Revised: 10/18/2016] [Accepted: 11/03/2016] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
The archaeal ancestor scenario (AAS) for the origin of eukaryotes implies the emergence of a new kind of organism from the fusion of ancestral archaeal and bacterial cells. Equipped with this “chimeric” molecular arsenal, the resulting cell would gradually accumulate unique genes and develop the complex molecular machineries and cellular compartments that are hallmarks of modern eukaryotes. In this regard, proteins related to phagocytosis and cell movement should be present in the archaeal ancestor, thus identifying the recently described candidate archaeal phylum “Lokiarchaeota” as resembling a possible candidate ancestor of eukaryotes. Despite its appeal, AAS seems incompatible with the genomic, molecular, and biochemical differences that exist between Archaea and Eukarya. In particular, the distribution of conserved protein domain structures in the proteomes of cellular organisms and viruses appears hard to reconcile with the AAS. In addition, concerns related to taxon and character sampling, presupposing bacterial outgroups in phylogenies, and nonuniform effects of protein domain structure rearrangement and gain/loss in concatenated alignments of protein sequences cast further doubt on AAS-supporting phylogenies. Here, we evaluate AAS against the traditional “three-domain” world of cellular organisms and propose that the discovery of Lokiarchaeota could be better reconciled under the latter view, especially in light of several additional biological and technical considerations.
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Cardenas JP, Quatrini R, Holmes DS. Aerobic Lineage of the Oxidative Stress Response Protein Rubrerythrin Emerged in an Ancient Microaerobic, (Hyper)Thermophilic Environment. Front Microbiol 2016; 7:1822. [PMID: 27917155 PMCID: PMC5114695 DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2016.01822] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/03/2016] [Accepted: 10/31/2016] [Indexed: 11/27/2022] Open
Abstract
Rubrerythrins (RBRs) are non-heme di-iron proteins belonging to the ferritin-like superfamily. They are involved in oxidative stress defense as peroxide scavengers in a wide range of organisms. The vast majority of RBRs, including classical forms of this protein, contain a C-terminal rubredoxin-like domain involved in electron transport that is used during catalysis in anaerobic conditions. Rubredoxin is an ancient and large protein family of short length (<100 residues) that contains a Fe-S center involved in electron transfer. However, functional forms of the enzyme lacking the rubredoxin-like domain have been reported (e.g., sulerythrin and ferriperoxin). In this study, phylogenomic evidence is presented that suggests that a complete lineage of rubrerythrins, lacking the rubredoxin-like domain, arose in an ancient microaerobic and (hyper)thermophilic environments in the ancestors of the Archaea Thermoproteales and Sulfolobales. This lineage (termed the “aerobic-type” lineage) subsequently evolved to become adapted to environments with progressively lower temperatures and higher oxygen concentrations via the acquisition of two co-localized genes, termed DUF3501 and RFO, encoding a conserved protein of unknown function and a predicted Fe-S oxidoreductase, respectively. Proposed Horizontal Gene Transfer events from these archaeal ancestors to Bacteria expanded the opportunities for further evolution of this RBR including adaption to lower temperatures. The second lineage (termed the cyanobacterial lineage) is proposed to have evolved in cyanobacterial ancestors, maybe in direct response to the production of oxygen via oxygenic photosynthesis during the Great Oxygen Event (GOE). It is hypothesized that both lineages of RBR emerged in a largely anaerobic world with “whiffs” of oxygen and that their subsequent independent evolutionary trajectories allowed microorganisms to transition from this anaerobic world to an aerobic one.
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Affiliation(s)
- Juan P Cardenas
- Center for Bioinformatics and Genome Biology, Fundacion Ciencia & VidaSantiago, Chile; Facultad de Ciencias Biologicas, Universidad Andres BelloSantiago, Chile
| | - Raquel Quatrini
- Laboratory of Microbial Ecophysiology, Fundación Ciencia & Vida Santiago, Chile
| | - David S Holmes
- Center for Bioinformatics and Genome Biology, Fundacion Ciencia & VidaSantiago, Chile; Facultad de Ciencias Biologicas, Universidad Andres BelloSantiago, Chile
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Abstract
Structural domains are believed to be modules within proteins that can fold and function independently. Some proteins show tandem repetitions of apparent modular structure that do not fold independently, but rather co-operate in stabilizing structural forms that comprise several repeat-units. For many natural repeat-proteins, it has been shown that weak energetic links between repeats lead to the breakdown of co-operativity and the appearance of folding sub-domains within an apparently regular repeat array. The quasi-1D architecture of repeat-proteins is crucial in detailing how the local energetic balances can modulate the folding dynamics of these proteins, which can be related to the physiological behaviour of these ubiquitous biological systems.
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35
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Brunk E, Mih N, Monk J, Zhang Z, O’Brien EJ, Bliven SE, Chen K, Chang RL, Bourne PE, Palsson BO. Systems biology of the structural proteome. BMC SYSTEMS BIOLOGY 2016; 10:26. [PMID: 26969117 PMCID: PMC4787049 DOI: 10.1186/s12918-016-0271-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 42] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/17/2015] [Accepted: 02/16/2016] [Indexed: 12/19/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND The success of genome-scale models (GEMs) can be attributed to the high-quality, bottom-up reconstructions of metabolic, protein synthesis, and transcriptional regulatory networks on an organism-specific basis. Such reconstructions are biochemically, genetically, and genomically structured knowledge bases that can be converted into a mathematical format to enable a myriad of computational biological studies. In recent years, genome-scale reconstructions have been extended to include protein structural information, which has opened up new vistas in systems biology research and empowered applications in structural systems biology and systems pharmacology. RESULTS Here, we present the generation, application, and dissemination of genome-scale models with protein structures (GEM-PRO) for Escherichia coli and Thermotoga maritima. We show the utility of integrating molecular scale analyses with systems biology approaches by discussing several comparative analyses on the temperature dependence of growth, the distribution of protein fold families, substrate specificity, and characteristic features of whole cell proteomes. Finally, to aid in the grand challenge of big data to knowledge, we provide several explicit tutorials of how protein-related information can be linked to genome-scale models in a public GitHub repository ( https://github.com/SBRG/GEMPro/tree/master/GEMPro_recon/). CONCLUSIONS Translating genome-scale, protein-related information to structured data in the format of a GEM provides a direct mapping of gene to gene-product to protein structure to biochemical reaction to network states to phenotypic function. Integration of molecular-level details of individual proteins, such as their physical, chemical, and structural properties, further expands the description of biochemical network-level properties, and can ultimately influence how to model and predict whole cell phenotypes as well as perform comparative systems biology approaches to study differences between organisms. GEM-PRO offers insight into the physical embodiment of an organism's genotype, and its use in this comparative framework enables exploration of adaptive strategies for these organisms, opening the door to many new lines of research. With these provided tools, tutorials, and background, the reader will be in a position to run GEM-PRO for their own purposes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elizabeth Brunk
- />Department of Bioengineering, University of California, La Jolla, San Diego, CA 92093 USA
- />Joint BioEnergy Institute, Emeryville, CA 94608 USA
| | - Nathan Mih
- />Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Program, University of California, La Jolla, San Diego, CA 92093 USA
| | - Jonathan Monk
- />Department of Bioengineering, University of California, La Jolla, San Diego, CA 92093 USA
| | - Zhen Zhang
- />Department of Bioengineering, University of California, La Jolla, San Diego, CA 92093 USA
| | - Edward J. O’Brien
- />Department of Bioengineering, University of California, La Jolla, San Diego, CA 92093 USA
| | - Spencer E. Bliven
- />Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Program, University of California, La Jolla, San Diego, CA 92093 USA
- />National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20894 USA
| | - Ke Chen
- />Department of Bioengineering, University of California, La Jolla, San Diego, CA 92093 USA
| | - Roger L. Chang
- />Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115 USA
| | - Philip E. Bourne
- />Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20894 USA
| | - Bernhard O. Palsson
- />Department of Bioengineering, University of California, La Jolla, San Diego, CA 92093 USA
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Tekaia F. Inferring Orthologs: Open Questions and Perspectives. GENOMICS INSIGHTS 2016; 9:17-28. [PMID: 26966373 PMCID: PMC4778853 DOI: 10.4137/gei.s37925] [Citation(s) in RCA: 39] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/18/2015] [Revised: 12/30/2015] [Accepted: 01/02/2016] [Indexed: 01/25/2023]
Abstract
With the increasing number of sequenced genomes and their comparisons, the detection of orthologs is crucial for reliable functional annotation and evolutionary analyses of genes and species. Yet, the dynamic remodeling of genome content through gain, loss, transfer of genes, and segmental and whole-genome duplication hinders reliable orthology detection. Moreover, the lack of direct functional evidence and the questionable quality of some available genome sequences and annotations present additional difficulties to assess orthology. This article reviews the existing computational methods and their potential accuracy in the high-throughput era of genome sequencing and anticipates open questions in terms of methodology, reliability, and computation. Appropriate taxon sampling together with combination of methods based on similarity, phylogeny, synteny, and evolutionary knowledge that may help detecting speciation events appears to be the most accurate strategy. This review also raises perspectives on the potential determination of orthology throughout the whole species phylogeny.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fredj Tekaia
- Institut Pasteur, Unit of Structural Microbiology, CNRS URA 3528 and University Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, France
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37
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Jeong H, Sung S, Kwon T, Seo M, Caetano-Anollés K, Choi SH, Cho S, Nasir A, Kim H. HGTree: database of horizontally transferred genes determined by tree reconciliation. Nucleic Acids Res 2015; 44:D610-9. [PMID: 26578597 PMCID: PMC4702880 DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkv1245] [Citation(s) in RCA: 30] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/11/2015] [Accepted: 11/01/2015] [Indexed: 01/13/2023] Open
Abstract
The HGTree database provides putative genome-wide horizontal gene transfer (HGT) information for 2472 completely sequenced prokaryotic genomes. This task is accomplished by reconstructing approximate maximum likelihood phylogenetic trees for each orthologous gene and corresponding 16S rRNA reference species sets and then reconciling the two trees under parsimony framework. The tree reconciliation method is generally considered to be a reliable way to detect HGT events but its practical use has remained limited because the method is computationally intensive and conceptually challenging. In this regard, HGTree (http://hgtree.snu.ac.kr) represents a useful addition to the biological community and enables quick and easy retrieval of information for HGT-acquired genes to better understand microbial taxonomy and evolution. The database is freely available and can be easily scaled and updated to keep pace with the rapid rise in genomic information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hyeonsoo Jeong
- Interdisciplinary Program in Bioinformatics, Seoul National University, Kwan-ak St. 599, Kwan-ak Gu, Seoul, 151-741, Republic of Korea Department of Animal Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
| | - Samsun Sung
- C&K genomics, Main Bldg. #514, SNU Research Park, Seoul 151-919, Republic of Korea
| | - Taehyung Kwon
- Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, Republic of Korea
| | - Minseok Seo
- Interdisciplinary Program in Bioinformatics, Seoul National University, Kwan-ak St. 599, Kwan-ak Gu, Seoul, 151-741, Republic of Korea
| | | | - Sang Ho Choi
- National Research Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology and Toxicology, Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Center for Food Safety and Toxicology, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-921, Republic of Korea
| | - Seoae Cho
- C&K genomics, Main Bldg. #514, SNU Research Park, Seoul 151-919, Republic of Korea
| | - Arshan Nasir
- Department of Biosciences, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Park Road, Chak Shahzad, Islamabad 45550, Pakistan
| | - Heebal Kim
- Interdisciplinary Program in Bioinformatics, Seoul National University, Kwan-ak St. 599, Kwan-ak Gu, Seoul, 151-741, Republic of Korea Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, Republic of Korea
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Scaiewicz A, Levitt M. The language of the protein universe. Curr Opin Genet Dev 2015; 35:50-6. [PMID: 26451980 DOI: 10.1016/j.gde.2015.08.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2015] [Revised: 08/20/2015] [Accepted: 08/25/2015] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
Abstract
Proteins, the main cell machinery which play a major role in nearly every cellular process, have always been a central focus in biology. We live in the post-genomic era, and inferring information from massive data sets is a steadily growing universal challenge. The increasing availability of fully sequenced genomes can be regarded as the 'Rosetta Stone' of the protein universe, allowing the understanding of genomes and their evolution, just as the original Rosetta Stone allowed Champollion to decipher the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. In this review, we consider aspects of the protein domain architectures repertoire that are closely related to those of human languages and aim to provide some insights about the language of proteins.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrea Scaiewicz
- Department of Structural Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5126, United States
| | - Michael Levitt
- Department of Structural Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5126, United States.
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39
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Nasir A, Caetano-Anollés G. A phylogenomic data-driven exploration of viral origins and evolution. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2015; 1:e1500527. [PMID: 26601271 PMCID: PMC4643759 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1500527] [Citation(s) in RCA: 116] [Impact Index Per Article: 12.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/27/2015] [Accepted: 06/30/2015] [Indexed: 05/05/2023]
Abstract
The origin of viruses remains mysterious because of their diverse and patchy molecular and functional makeup. Although numerous hypotheses have attempted to explain viral origins, none is backed by substantive data. We take full advantage of the wealth of available protein structural and functional data to explore the evolution of the proteomic makeup of thousands of cells and viruses. Despite the extremely reduced nature of viral proteomes, we established an ancient origin of the "viral supergroup" and the existence of widespread episodes of horizontal transfer of genetic information. Viruses harboring different replicon types and infecting distantly related hosts shared many metabolic and informational protein structural domains of ancient origin that were also widespread in cellular proteomes. Phylogenomic analysis uncovered a universal tree of life and revealed that modern viruses reduced from multiple ancient cells that harbored segmented RNA genomes and coexisted with the ancestors of modern cells. The model for the origin and evolution of viruses and cells is backed by strong genomic and structural evidence and can be reconciled with existing models of viral evolution if one considers viruses to have originated from ancient cells and not from modern counterparts.
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40
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Shahzad K, Mittenthal JE, Caetano-Anollés G. The organization of domains in proteins obeys Menzerath-Altmann's law of language. BMC SYSTEMS BIOLOGY 2015; 9:44. [PMID: 26260760 PMCID: PMC4531524 DOI: 10.1186/s12918-015-0192-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 24] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/25/2015] [Accepted: 07/30/2015] [Indexed: 11/10/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND The combination of domains in multidomain proteins enhances their function and structure but lengthens the molecules and increases their cost at cellular level. METHODS The dependence of domain length on the number of domains a protein holds was surveyed for a set of 60 proteomes representing free-living organisms from all kingdoms of life. Distributions were fitted using non-linear functions and fitted parameters interpreted with a formulation of decreasing returns. RESULTS We find that domain length decreases with increasing number of domains in proteins, following the Menzerath-Altmann (MA) law of language. Highly significant negative correlations exist for the set of proteomes examined. Mathematically, the MA law expresses as a power law relationship that unfolds when molecular persistence P is a function of domain accretion. P holds two terms, one reflecting the matter-energy cost of adding domains and extending their length, the other reflecting how domain length and number impinges on information and biophysics. The pattern of diminishing returns can therefore be explained as a frustrated interplay between the strategies of economy, flexibility and robustness, matching previously observed trade-offs in the domain makeup of proteomes. Proteomes of Archaea, Fungi and to a lesser degree Plants show the largest push towards molecular economy, each at their own economic stratum. Fungi increase domain size in single domain proteins while reinforcing the pattern of diminishing returns. In contrast, Metazoa, and to lesser degrees Protista and Bacteria, relax economy. Metazoa achieves maximum flexibility and robustness by harboring compact molecules and complex domain organization, offering a new functional vocabulary for molecular biology. CONCLUSIONS The tendency of parts to decrease their size when systems enlarge is universal for language and music, and now for parts of macromolecules, extending the MA law to natural systems.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Jay E Mittenthal
- Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA.
| | - Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Illinois Informatics Institute, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA. .,Department of Crop Sciences, Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, University of Illinois, 332 NSRC, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA.
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41
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Caetano-Anollés G, Caetano-Anollés D. Computing the origin and evolution of the ribosome from its structure - Uncovering processes of macromolecular accretion benefiting synthetic biology. Comput Struct Biotechnol J 2015; 13:427-47. [PMID: 27096056 PMCID: PMC4823900 DOI: 10.1016/j.csbj.2015.07.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/09/2015] [Revised: 07/16/2015] [Accepted: 07/19/2015] [Indexed: 12/11/2022] Open
Abstract
Accretion occurs pervasively in nature at widely different timeframes. The process also manifests in the evolution of macromolecules. Here we review recent computational and structural biology studies of evolutionary accretion that make use of the ideographic (historical, retrodictive) and nomothetic (universal, predictive) scientific frameworks. Computational studies uncover explicit timelines of accretion of structural parts in molecular repertoires and molecules. Phylogenetic trees of protein structural domains and proteomes and their molecular functions were built from a genomic census of millions of encoded proteins and associated terminal Gene Ontology terms. Trees reveal a ‘metabolic-first’ origin of proteins, the late development of translation, and a patchwork distribution of proteins in biological networks mediated by molecular recruitment. Similarly, the natural history of ancient RNA molecules inferred from trees of molecular substructures built from a census of molecular features shows patchwork-like accretion patterns. Ideographic analyses of ribosomal history uncover the early appearance of structures supporting mRNA decoding and tRNA translocation, the coevolution of ribosomal proteins and RNA, and a first evolutionary transition that brings ribosomal subunits together into a processive protein biosynthetic complex. Nomothetic structural biology studies of tertiary interactions and ancient insertions in rRNA complement these findings, once concentric layering assumptions are removed. Patterns of coaxial helical stacking reveal a frustrated dynamics of outward and inward ribosomal growth possibly mediated by structural grafting. The early rise of the ribosomal ‘turnstile’ suggests an evolutionary transition in natural biological computation. Results make explicit the need to understand processes of molecular growth and information transfer of macromolecules.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1101W. Peabody Drive, Urbana, IL 61801, USA; C.R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
| | - Derek Caetano-Anollés
- C.R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
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The Origin and Evolution of Baeyer-Villiger Monooxygenases (BVMOs): An Ancestral Family of Flavin Monooxygenases. PLoS One 2015; 10:e0132689. [PMID: 26161776 PMCID: PMC4498894 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0132689] [Citation(s) in RCA: 33] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/29/2014] [Accepted: 06/18/2015] [Indexed: 12/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The Baeyer-Villiger Monooxygenases (BVMOs) are enzymes belonging to the "Class B" of flavin monooxygenases and are capable of performing exquisite selective oxidations. These enzymes have been studied from a biotechnological perspective, but their physiological substrates and functional roles are widely unknown. Here, we investigated the origin, taxonomic distribution and evolutionary history of the BVMO genes. By using in silico approaches, 98 BVMO encoding genes were detected in the three domains of life: Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya. We found evidence for the presence of these genes in Metazoa (Hydra vulgaris, Oikopleura dioica and Adineta vaga) and Haptophyta (Emiliania huxleyi) for the first time. Furthermore, a search for other "Class B" monooxygenases (flavoprotein monooxygenases--FMOs--and N-hydroxylating monooxygenases--NMOs) was conducted. These sequences were also found in the three domains of life. Phylogenetic analyses of all "Class B" monooxygenases revealed that NMOs and BVMOs are monophyletic, whereas FMOs form a paraphyletic group. Based on these results, we propose that BVMO genes were already present in the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) and their current taxonomic distribution is the result of differential duplication and loss of paralogous genes.
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Goncearenco A, Berezovsky IN. Protein function from its emergence to diversity in contemporary proteins. Phys Biol 2015; 12:045002. [PMID: 26057563 DOI: 10.1088/1478-3975/12/4/045002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 43] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/18/2022]
Abstract
The goal of this work is to learn from nature the rules that govern evolution and the design of protein function. The fundamental laws of physics lie in the foundation of the protein structure and all stages of the protein evolution, determining optimal sizes and shapes at different levels of structural hierarchy. We looked back into the very onset of the protein evolution with a goal to find elementary functions (EFs) that came from the prebiotic world and served as building blocks of the first enzymes. We defined the basic structural and functional units of biochemical reactions-elementary functional loops. The diversity of contemporary enzymes can be described via combinations of a limited number of elementary chemical reactions, many of which are performed by the descendants of primitive prebiotic peptides/proteins. By analyzing protein sequences we were able to identify EFs shared by seemingly unrelated protein superfamilies and folds and to unravel evolutionary relations between them. Binding and metabolic processing of the metal- and nucleotide-containing cofactors and ligands are among the most abundant ancient EFs that became indispensable in many natural enzymes. Highly designable folds provide structural scaffolds for many different biochemical reactions. We show that contemporary proteins are built from a limited number of EFs, making their analysis instrumental for establishing the rules for protein design. Evolutionary studies help us to accumulate the library of essential EFs and to establish intricate relations between different folds and functional superfamilies. Generalized sequence-structure descriptors of the EF will become useful in future design and engineering of desired enzymatic functions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexander Goncearenco
- Computational Biology Unit and Department of Informatics, University of Bergen, N-5008 Bergen, Norway
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Chang TC, Stergiopoulos I. Evolutionary analysis of the global landscape of protein domain types and domain architectures associated with family 14 carbohydrate-binding modules. FEBS Lett 2015; 589:1813-8. [PMID: 26067847 DOI: 10.1016/j.febslet.2015.05.048] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/15/2015] [Revised: 05/11/2015] [Accepted: 05/20/2015] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
Abstract
Domain promiscuity is a powerful evolutionary force that promotes functional innovation in proteins, thus increasing proteome and organismal complexity. Carbohydrate-binding modules, in particular, are known to partake in complex modular architectures that play crucial roles in numerous biochemical and molecular processes. However, the extent, functional, and evolutionary significance of promiscuity is shrouded in mystery for most CBM families. Here, we analyzed the global promiscuity of family 14 carbohydrate-binding modules (CBM14s) and show that fusion, fission, and reorganization events with numerous other domain types interplayed incessantly in a lineage-dependent manner to likely facilitate species adaptation and functional innovation in the family.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ti-Cheng Chang
- Department of Plant Pathology, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA
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Prakash A, Bateman A. Domain atrophy creates rare cases of functional partial protein domains. Genome Biol 2015; 16:88. [PMID: 25924720 PMCID: PMC4432964 DOI: 10.1186/s13059-015-0655-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/20/2014] [Accepted: 04/15/2015] [Indexed: 01/12/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Protein domains display a range of structural diversity, with numerous additions and deletions of secondary structural elements between related domains. We have observed a small number of cases of surprising large-scale deletions of core elements of structural domains. We propose a new concept called domain atrophy, where protein domains lose a significant number of core structural elements. RESULTS Here, we implement a new pipeline to systematically identify new cases of domain atrophy across all known protein sequences. The output of this pipeline was carefully checked by hand, which filtered out partial domain instances that were unlikely to represent true domain atrophy due to misannotations or un-annotated sequence fragments. We identify 75 cases of domain atrophy, of which eight cases are found in a three-dimensional protein structure and 67 cases have been inferred based on mapping to a known homologous structure. Domains with structural variations include ancient folds such as the TIM-barrel and Rossmann folds. Most of these domains are observed to show structural loss that does not affect their functional sites. CONCLUSION Our analysis has significantly increased the known cases of domain atrophy. We discuss specific instances of domain atrophy and see that there has often been a compensatory mechanism that helps to maintain the stability of the partial domain. Our study indicates that although domain atrophy is an extremely rare phenomenon, protein domains under certain circumstances can tolerate extreme mutations giving rise to partial, but functional, domains.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ananth Prakash
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, CB10 1SD, UK.
| | - Alex Bateman
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, CB10 1SD, UK.
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Caetano-Anollés G, Mittenthal JE, Caetano-Anollés D, Kim KM. A calibrated chronology of biochemistry reveals a stem line of descent responsible for planetary biodiversity. Front Genet 2014; 5:306. [PMID: 25309572 PMCID: PMC4161044 DOI: 10.3389/fgene.2014.00306] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/26/2014] [Accepted: 08/18/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Time-calibrated phylogenomic trees of protein domain structure produce powerful chronologies describing the evolution of biochemistry and life. These timetrees are built from a genomic census of millions of encoded proteins using models of nested accumulation of molecules in evolving proteomes. Here we show that a primordial stem line of descent, a propagating series of pluripotent cellular entities, populates the deeper branches of the timetrees. The stem line produced for the first time cellular grades ~2.9 billion years (Gy)-ago, which slowly turned into lineages of superkingdom Archaea. Prompted by the rise of planetary oxygen and aerobic metabolism, the stem line also produced bacterial and eukaryal lineages. Superkingdom-specific domain repertoires emerged ~2.1 Gy-ago delimiting fully diversified Bacteria. Repertoires specific to Eukarya and Archaea appeared 300 millions years later. Results reconcile reductive evolutionary processes leading to the early emergence of Archaea to superkingdom-specific innovations compatible with a tree of life rooted in Bacteria.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana, IL, USA
| | - Jay E Mittenthal
- Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Illinois Urbana, IL, USA
| | - Derek Caetano-Anollés
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana, IL, USA
| | - Kyung Mo Kim
- Microbial Resource Center, Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology Daejeon, South Korea
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Kim KM, Nasir A, Hwang K, Caetano-Anollés G. A tree of cellular life inferred from a genomic census of molecular functions. J Mol Evol 2014; 79:240-62. [PMID: 25128982 DOI: 10.1007/s00239-014-9637-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2014] [Accepted: 08/05/2014] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Abstract
Phylogenomics aims to describe evolutionary relatedness between organisms by analyzing genomic data. The common practice is to produce phylogenomic trees from molecular information in the sequence, order, and content of genes in genomes. These phylogenies describe the evolution of life and become valuable tools for taxonomy. The recent availability of structural and functional data for hundreds of genomes now offers the opportunity to study evolution using more deep, conserved, and reliable sets of molecular features. Here, we reconstruct trees of life from the functions of proteins. We start by inferring rooted phylogenomic trees and networks of organisms directly from Gene Ontology annotations. Phylogenies and networks yield novel insights into the emergence and evolution of cellular life. The ancestor of Archaea originated earlier than the ancestors of Bacteria and Eukarya and was thermophilic. In contrast, basal bacterial lineages were non-thermophilic. A close relationship between Plants and Metazoa was also identified that disagrees with the traditional Fungi-Metazoa grouping. While measures of evolutionary reticulation were minimum in Eukarya and maximum in Bacteria, the massive role of horizontal gene transfer in microbes did not materialize in phylogenomic networks. Phylogenies and networks also showed that the best reconstructions were recovered when problematic taxa (i.e., parasitic/symbiotic organisms) and horizontally transferred characters were excluded from analysis. Our results indicate that functionomic data represent a useful addition to the set of molecular characters used for tree reconstruction and that trees of cellular life carry in deep branches considerable predictive power to explain the evolution of living organisms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kyung Mo Kim
- Microbial Resource Center, Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Daejeon, 305-806, Korea
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On How Many Fundamental Kinds of Cells are Present on Earth: Looking for Phylogenetic Traits that Would Allow the Identification of the Primary Lines of Descent. J Mol Evol 2014; 78:313-20. [DOI: 10.1007/s00239-014-9626-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/03/2014] [Accepted: 05/21/2014] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
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Caetano-Anollés G, Nasir A, Zhou K, Caetano-Anollés D, Mittenthal JE, Sun FJ, Kim KM. Archaea: the first domain of diversified life. ARCHAEA (VANCOUVER, B.C.) 2014; 2014:590214. [PMID: 24987307 PMCID: PMC4060292 DOI: 10.1155/2014/590214] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2013] [Revised: 02/15/2014] [Accepted: 03/25/2014] [Indexed: 01/23/2023]
Abstract
The study of the origin of diversified life has been plagued by technical and conceptual difficulties, controversy, and apriorism. It is now popularly accepted that the universal tree of life is rooted in the akaryotes and that Archaea and Eukarya are sister groups to each other. However, evolutionary studies have overwhelmingly focused on nucleic acid and protein sequences, which partially fulfill only two of the three main steps of phylogenetic analysis, formulation of realistic evolutionary models, and optimization of tree reconstruction. In the absence of character polarization, that is, the ability to identify ancestral and derived character states, any statement about the rooting of the tree of life should be considered suspect. Here we show that macromolecular structure and a new phylogenetic framework of analysis that focuses on the parts of biological systems instead of the whole provide both deep and reliable phylogenetic signal and enable us to put forth hypotheses of origin. We review over a decade of phylogenomic studies, which mine information in a genomic census of millions of encoded proteins and RNAs. We show how the use of process models of molecular accumulation that comply with Weston's generality criterion supports a consistent phylogenomic scenario in which the origin of diversified life can be traced back to the early history of Archaea.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, Institute for Genomic Biology and Illinois Informatics Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
| | - Arshan Nasir
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, Institute for Genomic Biology and Illinois Informatics Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
| | - Kaiyue Zhou
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, Institute for Genomic Biology and Illinois Informatics Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
| | - Derek Caetano-Anollés
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, Institute for Genomic Biology and Illinois Informatics Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
| | - Jay E. Mittenthal
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, Institute for Genomic Biology and Illinois Informatics Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
| | - Feng-Jie Sun
- School of Science and Technology, Georgia Gwinnett College, Lawrenceville, GA 30043, USA
| | - Kyung Mo Kim
- Microbial Resource Center, Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Daejeon 305-806, Republic of Korea
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Nath N, Mitchell JBO, Caetano-Anollés G. The natural history of biocatalytic mechanisms. PLoS Comput Biol 2014; 10:e1003642. [PMID: 24874434 PMCID: PMC4038463 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003642] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/18/2013] [Accepted: 04/09/2014] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
Phylogenomic analysis of the occurrence and abundance of protein domains in proteomes has recently showed that the α/β architecture is probably the oldest fold design. This holds important implications for the origins of biochemistry. Here we explore structure-function relationships addressing the use of chemical mechanisms by ancestral enzymes. We test the hypothesis that the oldest folds used the most mechanisms. We start by tracing biocatalytic mechanisms operating in metabolic enzymes along a phylogenetic timeline of the first appearance of homologous superfamilies of protein domain structures from CATH. A total of 335 enzyme reactions were retrieved from MACiE and were mapped over fold age. We define a mechanistic step type as one of the 51 mechanistic annotations given in MACiE, and each step of each of the 335 mechanisms was described using one or more of these annotations. We find that the first two folds, the P-loop containing nucleotide triphosphate hydrolase and the NAD(P)-binding Rossmann-like homologous superfamilies, were α/β architectures responsible for introducing 35% (18/51) of the known mechanistic step types. We find that these two oldest structures in the phylogenomic analysis of protein domains introduced many mechanistic step types that were later combinatorially spread in catalytic history. The most common mechanistic step types included fundamental building blocks of enzyme chemistry: "Proton transfer," "Bimolecular nucleophilic addition," "Bimolecular nucleophilic substitution," and "Unimolecular elimination by the conjugate base." They were associated with the most ancestral fold structure typical of P-loop containing nucleotide triphosphate hydrolases. Over half of the mechanistic step types were introduced in the evolutionary timeline before the appearance of structures specific to diversified organisms, during a period of architectural diversification. The other half unfolded gradually after organismal diversification and during a period that spanned ∼2 billion years of evolutionary history.
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Affiliation(s)
- Neetika Nath
- Biomedical Sciences Research Complex and EaStCHEM School of Chemistry, University of St. Andrews, North Haugh, St. Andrews, Scotland, United Kingdom
| | - John B. O. Mitchell
- Biomedical Sciences Research Complex and EaStCHEM School of Chemistry, University of St. Andrews, North Haugh, St. Andrews, Scotland, United Kingdom
| | - Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America
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