Phylogeny of endocytic components yields insight into the process of nonendosymbiotic organelle evolution.

ABSTRACT: The process by which some eukaryotic organelles, for example the endomembrane system, evolved without endosymbiotic input remains poorly understood. This problem largely arises because many major cellular systems predate the last common eukaryotic ancestor (LCEA) and thus do not provide examples of organellogenesis in progress. A model is emerging whereby gene duplication and divergence of multiple "specificity-" or "identity-" encoding proteins for the various endomembranous organelles produced the diversity of nonendosymbiotically derived cellular compartments present in modern eukaryotes. To address this possibility, we analyzed three molecular components of the endocytic membrane-trafficking machinery. Phylogenetic analyses of the endocytic syntaxins, Rab 5, and the beta-adaptins each

SUBMITTER: Dacks JB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2206580 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature