Highly regulated, diversifying NTP-dependent biological conflict systems with implications for the emergence of multicellularity.

ABSTRACT: Social cellular aggregation or multicellular organization pose increased risk of transmission of infections through the system upon infection of a single cell. The generality of the evolutionary responses to this outside of Metazoa remains unclear. We report the discovery of several thematically unified, remarkable biological conflict systems preponderantly present in multicellular prokaryotes. These combine thresholding mechanisms utilizing NTPase chaperones (the MoxR-vWA couple), GTPases and proteolytic cascades with hypervariable effectors, which vary either by using a reverse transcriptase-dependent diversity-generating system or through a system of acquisition of diverse protein modules, typically in inactive form, from various cellular subsystems. Conciliant lines of evidence indicat

SUBMITTER: Kaur G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7159879 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature