Evolutionary Origin of the Protozoan Parasites Histone-like Proteins (HU)

The histone-like proteins (HU) belong to a family of DNA architectural proteins that stabilize nucleoprotein complexes. We found a putative HU protein (TgGlmHMM_3045) in Toxoplasma gondii genome that was homologous to the bacterial HU protein. This putative sequence was located in the scaffold TGG_995361 of the chromosome 10. The sequence included the prokaryotic bacterial histone-like domain, KFGSLGlRRRGERVARNPRT (ID number PS00045). HU protein sequences were also found in Plasmodium falciparum, Neospora caninum, Theileria parva and Theileria annulata. We found that the homology of the putative HU protein in Apicomplexa was greater with bacterial histone-like proteins than with eukaryotic histone proteins. The phylogenetic tree indicated that the putative HU protein genes were acquired in Apicomplexa by means of a secondary endosymbiotic event from red algae and later they were transferred from the apicoplast organelle to the nuclear genome.

[1]  Amos Bairoch,et al.  The PROSITE database, its status in 1999 , 1999, Nucleic Acids Res..

[2]  Manabu Takahara,et al.  Detection and Localization of a Chloroplast-Encoded HU-Like Protein That Organizes Chloroplast Nucleoids Article, publication date, and citation information can be found at www.plantcell.org/cgi/doi/10.1105/tpc.002717. , 2002, The Plant Cell Online.

[3]  J. Wong,et al.  Histone-Like Proteins of the Dinoflagellate Crypthecodinium cohnii Have Homologies to Bacterial DNA-Binding Proteins , 2003, Eukaryotic Cell.

[4]  Li Li,et al.  ToxoDB: accessing the Toxoplasma gondii genome , 2003, Nucleic Acids Res..

[5]  William R. Taylor,et al.  The rapid generation of mutation data matrices from protein sequences , 1992, Comput. Appl. Biosci..

[6]  H. Nash,et al.  Purification and properties of the Escherichia coli protein factor required for lambda integrative recombination. , 1981, The Journal of biological chemistry.

[7]  Rodrigo Lopez,et al.  WU-Blast2 server at the European Bioinformatics Institute , 2003, Nucleic Acids Res..

[8]  Jessica C Kissinger,et al.  A first glimpse into the pattern and scale of gene transfer in Apicomplexa. , 2004, International journal for parasitology.

[9]  D. Roos,et al.  Nuclear-encoded, plastid-targeted genes suggest a single common origin for apicomplexan and dinoflagellate plastids. , 2001, Molecular biology and evolution.

[10]  J. Thompson,et al.  CLUSTAL W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, position-specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice. , 1994, Nucleic acids research.

[11]  J. Schug,et al.  The Plasmodium genome database , 2002, Nature.

[12]  J Zuegge,et al.  Deciphering apicoplast targeting signals--feature extraction from nuclear-encoded precursors of Plasmodium falciparum apicoplast proteins. , 2001, Gene.

[13]  G. McFadden,et al.  Comment on "A Green Algal Apicoplast Ancestor" , 2003, Science.

[14]  A. Kornberg,et al.  Novel histone H2A-like protein of escherichia coli. , 1980, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[15]  N. Sato,et al.  Organization, developmental dynamics, and evolution of plastid nucleoids. , 2003, International review of cytology.

[16]  J Schultz,et al.  SMART, a simple modular architecture research tool: identification of signaling domains. , 1998, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[17]  J. Palmer,et al.  A Plastid of Probable Green Algal Origin in Apicomplexan Parasites , 1997, Science.

[18]  J. Wong,et al.  Alveolata histone‐like proteins have different evolutionary origins , 2006, Journal of evolutionary biology.

[19]  M. Soares,et al.  Migration of the Plastid Genome to the Nucleus in a Peridinin Dinoflagellate , 2004, Current Biology.

[20]  G. Heijne,et al.  ChloroP, a neural network‐based method for predicting chloroplast transit peptides and their cleavage sites , 1999, Protein science : a publication of the Protein Society.

[21]  C. Delwiche,et al.  Dinoflagellate expressed sequence tag data indicate massive transfer of chloroplast genes to the nuclear genome. , 2004, Protist.

[22]  T. Cavalier-smith.  Genomic reduction and evolution of novel genetic membranes and protein-targeting machinery in eukaryote-eukaryote chimaeras (meta-algae). , 2003, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[23]  Jessica C Kissinger,et al.  Mining the Plasmodium genome database to define organellar function: what does the apicoplast do? , 2002, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[24]  D. González-Halphen,et al.  On the evolutionary origins of apicoplasts: revisiting the rhodophyte vs. chlorophyte controversy. , 2004, Microbes and infection.

[25]  R. Hengge-aronis,et al.  The Escherichia coli histone‐like protein HU regulates rpoS translation , 2001, Molecular microbiology.

[26]  R. Ghirlando,et al.  Nucleosomes: a solution to a crowded intracellular environment? , 1997, Journal of theoretical biology.