Sculpting the endomembrane system in deep time: high resolution phylogenetics of Rab GTPases.

ABSTRACT: The presence of a nucleus and other membrane-bounded intracellular compartments is the defining feature of eukaryotic cells. Endosymbiosis accounts for the origins of mitochondria and plastids, but the evolutionary ancestry of the remaining cellular compartments is incompletely documented. Resolving the evolutionary history of organelle-identity encoding proteins within the endomembrane system is a necessity for unravelling the origins and diversification of the endogenously derived organelles. Comparative genomics reveals events after the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA), but resolution of events prior to LECA, and a full account of the intracellular compartments present in LECA, has proved elusive. We have devised and exploited a new phylogenetic strategy to reconstruct the history

SUBMITTER: Elias M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3383260 | biostudies-literature | 2012 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature