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Horizontal gene transfer

Eukaryotes under a new light

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 9, page 229 (2011)Cite this article

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During a genomic analysis of various marine dinoflagellates, the authors sequenced >18,000 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from Oxyrrhis marina, a predatory microorganism that is abundant in shallow waters, and found several sequences encoding proteins that were highly similar to bacterial proteorhodopsins. Interestingly, similar ESTs were also obtained from two other dinoflagellates, Pyrocystis lunula and Alexandrium tamarense. The conservation of these proteorhodopsin genes among distantly related dinoflagellates suggests that the genes may have been horizontally transferred from marine bacteria around the time of origin of the dinoflagellates. Moreover, the O. marina ESTs included transcripts encoding a protein that is highly similar to bacterial carotenoid dioxygenases and therefore may have a role in the synthesis of the carotenoid retinal, a prosthetic group found in proteorhodopsins. The dinoflagellate may have acquired this enzyme either horizontally from bacteria or vertically from an ancestral plastid.

bacteria-derived proteorhodopsins are present in some marine protists.

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References

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Slamovits, C. H. et al. A bacterial proteorhodopsin proton pump in marine eukaryotes. Nature Commun. 2, 183 (2011)

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FURTHER READING

  1. Fuhrman. J. A., Schwalbach, M. S. & Stingl, U. Proteorhodopsins: an array of physiological roles? Nature Rev. Microbiol. 6, 488–494 (2008)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

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Authors
  1. Cesar Sanchez
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Sanchez, C. Eukaryotes under a new light. Nat Rev Microbiol 9, 229 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro2552

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