Evolution of bacterial protein-tyrosine kinases and their relaxed specificity toward substrates.

ABSTRACT: It has often been speculated that bacterial protein-tyrosine kinases (BY-kinases) evolve rapidly and maintain relaxed substrate specificity to quickly adopt new substrates when evolutionary pressure in that direction arises. Here, we report a phylogenomic and biochemical analysis of BY-kinases, and their relationship to substrates aimed to validate this hypothesis. Our results suggest that BY-kinases are ubiquitously distributed in bacterial phyla and underwent a complex evolutionary history, affected considerably by gene duplications and horizontal gene transfer events. This is consistent with the fact that the BY-kinase sequences represent a high level of substitution saturation and have a higher evolutionary rate compared with other bacterial genes. On the basis of similarity networks,

SUBMITTER: Shi L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4007543 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature