Abstract
The transportation of solutes across the inner membrane of the mitochondria is catalyzed by a nuclear-coded family of transport proteins called mitochondrial carriers (MCs). Sequences from dictyostelid genome projects have facilitated analysis of the evolution of the dictyostelid mitochondrial carrier family (MCF). The average evolutionary distances between various regions in the MCF shows that the transmembrane region (TR) and conical pit region (CPR) are the only two conserved structural regions. A phylogenetic tree built using the concatenated orthologous TR and CPR sequences of 7 MCs showed that dictyostelids are similar to metazoans in this way. A close evolutionary relationship was observed between dictyostelids and metazoans in 4 MCs known to be related to ADP/ATP transport (MAA). This was further evidenced by the fact that dictyostelids have undergone gene expansion similar to that of metazoans during the evolution of MAA. Sequence logo analysis of CPR in MAA showed that dictyostelids have motifs similar to those of Metazoa. Combined with the conserved substrate binding site of 7 MCs in eukaryotes, it is postulated that dictyostelids are closely related to Metazoa with respect to the evolution of MAA.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40064-016-3146-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Social Amoebae, or Dictyostelia, are eukaryotic microbes with a unique life cycle consisting of both uni- and multicellular stages (Basu et al 2013)
The average evolutionary distances of various regions in the mitochondrial carrier family (MCF) showed that the transmembrane region (TR) and conical pit region (CPR) were the only two regions conserved during evolution (Fig. 1b)
Combined with the TR and CPR, which constitute the core of solute carrier transport (Gong et al 2010), these observations indicated that they can represent MCF
Summary
Social Amoebae, or Dictyostelia, are eukaryotic microbes with a unique life cycle consisting of both uni- and multicellular stages (Basu et al 2013). Each organism starts its life as a unicellular amoeba, but when starved it aggregates with others to form a multicellular fruiting body. This process has been best described in the model organism Dictyostelium discoideum (Schaap et al 2006; Romeralo et al 2011). D. discoideum has achieved multicellularity using strategies similar to those of Metazoa, indicating their evolutionary relationship (Eichinger et al 2005). Molecular channels facilitate cell–cell translocation of solutes and signaling molecules and are widely distributed in almost all complex multicellular organisms (Knoll 2011). It is necessary to further study the evolutionary relationship between Dictyostelia and Metazoa in solute channel proteins
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