Philippe Lopez

On the conservation of protein sequences in evolution.

In their comment about our paper,Philippe and Lopez note that, ‘theevolution of proteins and of their functionsshould be considered a much morecomplex phenomenon than assumed bystandard models’. We agree with thisstatement. Nevertheless, we would like togive some explanatory notes to theirdiscussion of our paper.We did not reject in general thehypothesis of horizontal gene transfer(HGT) in the case of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) andalcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) betweenanimals and

EGN: a wizard for construction of gene and genome similarity networks

BackgroundIncreasingly, similarity networks are being used for evolutionary analyses of molecular datasets. These networks are very useful, in particular for the analysis of gene sharing, lateral gene transfer and for the detection of distant homologs. Currently, such analyses require some computer programming skills due to the limited availability of user-friendly freely distributed software. Consequently, although appealing, the construction and analyses of these networks remain less familiar to biologists than do phylogenetic approaches.ResultsIn order to ease the use of similarity networks in the community of evolutionary biologists, we introduce a software program, EGN, that runs under Linux or MacOSX. EGN automates the reconstruction of gene and genome networks from nucleic and proteic sequences. EGN also implements statistics describing genetic diversity in these samples, for various user-defined thresholds of similarities. In the interest of studying the complexity of evolutionary processes affecting microbial evolution, we applied EGN to a dataset of 571,044 proteic sequences from the three domains of life and from mobile elements. We observed that, in Borrelia, plasmids play a different role than in most other eubacteria. Rather than being genetic couriers involved in lateral gene transfer, Borrelia’s plasmids and their genes act as private genetic goods, that contribute to the creation of genetic diversity within their parasitic hosts.ConclusionEGN can be used for constructing, analyzing, and mining molecular datasets in evolutionary studies. The program can help increase our knowledge of the processes through which genes from distinct sources and/or from multiple genomes co-evolve in lineages of cellular organisms.

Testing ecological theories with sequence similarity networks: marine ciliates exhibit similar geographic dispersal patterns as multicellular organisms

BackgroundHigh-throughput sequencing technologies are lifting major limitations to molecular-based ecological studies of eukaryotic microbial diversity, but analyses of the resulting millions of short sequences remain a major bottleneck for these approaches. Here, we introduce the analytical and statistical framework of sequence similarity networks, increasingly used in evolutionary studies and graph theory, into the field of ecology to analyze novel pyrosequenced V4 small subunit rDNA (SSU-rDNA) sequence data sets in the context of previous studies, including SSU-rDNA Sanger sequence data from cultured ciliates and from previous environmental diversity inventories.ResultsOur broadly applicable protocol quantified the progress in the description of genetic diversity of ciliates by environmental SSU-rDNA surveys, detected a fundamental historical bias in the tendency to recover already known groups in these surveys, and revealed substantial amounts of hidden microbial diversity. Moreover, network measures demonstrated that ciliates are not globally dispersed, but are structured by habitat and geographical location at intermediate geographical scale, as observed for bacteria, plants, and animals.ConclusionsCurrently available ‘universal’ primers used for local in-depth sequencing surveys provide little hope to exhaust the significantly higher ciliate (and most likely microbial) diversity than previously thought. Network analyses such as presented in this study offer a promising way to guide the design of novel primers and to further explore this vast and structured microbial diversity.

Clanistics: a multi-level perspective for harvesting unrooted gene trees

Prokaryotic evolution takes place within and between genomes, when significant amounts of genes are transferred and recombined between interacting genetic partners. These non-tree-like evolutionary processes, intertwined with events of vertical descent, lead to a massive production of unrooted trees in which branches, nodes and groupings have different biological meanings than for the rooted trees usually studied by phylogenetics. Such unrooted gene trees can not only inform us about organismal phylogeny, but also about the variety of evolutionary, genetic, functional and ecological relationships affecting a plurality of evolutionary units, at multiple levels - from genes, groups of genes, organisms and consortia, to communities. Here we introduce new notions designed to analyze unrooted trees with more depth and accuracy. We demonstrate how a clanistic perspective can significantly improve our knowledge of evolutionary processes and relationships for most evolving systems, whether they are mobile genetic elements or cellular genomes.

Protein networks identify novel symbiogenetic genes resulting from plastid endosymbiosis

Significance Endosymbiotic gene transfer from the plastid genome to the nucleus comprises the most significant source of horizontal gene transfer in photosynthetic eukaryotes. We investigated genomic data at the infragenic level to determine whether the cyanobacterial endosymbiont also contributed gene fragments (i.e., domains) to create novel nuclear-encoded proteins. We found 67 such gene families that are expressed as RNA and widely distributed among plants and algae. At least 23 genes are putatively involved in redox regulation and light response, namely the maintenance of a photodynamic organelle. Our results add a new layer of complexity to plastid integration and point to the role of fused proteins as key players in this process. The integration of foreign genetic information is central to the evolution of eukaryotes, as has been demonstrated for the origin of the Calvin cycle and of the heme and carotenoid biosynthesis pathways in algae and plants. For photosynthetic lineages, this coordination involved three genomes of divergent phylogenetic origins (the nucleus, plastid, and mitochondrion). Major hurdles overcome by the ancestor of these lineages were harnessing the oxygen-evolving organelle, optimizing the use of light, and stabilizing the partnership between the plastid endosymbiont and host through retargeting of proteins to the nascent organelle. Here we used protein similarity networks that can disentangle reticulate gene histories to explore how these significant challenges were met. We discovered a previously hidden component of algal and plant nuclear genomes that originated from the plastid endosymbiont: symbiogenetic genes (S genes). These composite proteins, exclusive to photosynthetic eukaryotes, encode a cyanobacterium-derived domain fused to one of cyanobacterial or another prokaryotic origin and have emerged multiple, independent times during evolution. Transcriptome data demonstrate the existence and expression of S genes across a wide swath of algae and plants, and functional data indicate their involvement in tolerance to oxidative stress, phototropism, and adaptation to nitrogen limitation. Our research demonstrates the “recycling” of genetic information by photosynthetic eukaryotes to generate novel composite genes, many of which function in plastid maintenance.

Monitoring the Dynamics of Monomer Exchange Using Electrospray Mass Spectrometry: The Case of the Dimeric Glucosamine-6-Phosphate Synthase

Escherichia coli glucosamine-6-phosphate synthase (GlmS) is a dimeric enzyme from the glutamine-dependent amidotransferases family, which catalyses the conversion of D-fructose-6-phosphate (Fru6P) and glutamine (Gln) into D-glucosamine-6-phosphate (GlcN6P) and glutamate, respectively. Extensive X-ray crystallography investigations have been reported, highlighting the importance of the dimeric association to form the sugar active site as well as significant conformational changes of the protein upon substrate and product binding. In the present work, an approach based on time-resolved noncovalent mass spectrometry has been developed to study the dynamics of GlmS subunit exchange. Using 14N versus 15N labeled proteins, the kinetics of GlmS subunit exchange was monitored with the wild-type enzyme in the presence of different substrates and products as well as with the protein bearing a key amino acid mutation specially designed to weaken the dimer interface. Determination of rate constants of subunit exchange revealed important modifications of the protein dynamics: while glutamine, glutamate, and K603A mutation accelerates subunit exchange, Fru6P and GlcN6P totally prevent it. These results are described in light of the available structural information, providing additional useful data for both the characterization of GlmS catalytic process and the design of new GlmS inhibitors. Finally, time-resolved noncovalent MS can be proposed as an additional biophysical technique for real-time monitoring of protein dynamics.

Formation of chimeric genes with essential functions at the origin of eukaryotes

BackgroundEukaryotes evolved from the symbiotic association of at least two prokaryotic partners, and a good deal is known about the timings, mechanisms, and dynamics of these evolutionary steps. Recently, it was shown that a new class of nuclear genes, symbiogenetic genes (S-genes), was formed concomitant with endosymbiosis and the subsequent evolution of eukaryotic photosynthetic lineages. Understanding their origins and contributions to eukaryogenesis would provide insights into the ways in which cellular complexity has evolved.ResultsHere, we show that chimeric nuclear genes (S-genes), built from prokaryotic domains, are critical for explaining the leap forward in cellular complexity achieved during eukaryogenesis. A total of 282 S-gene families contributed solutions to many of the challenges faced by early eukaryotes, including enhancing the informational machinery, processing spliceosomal introns, tackling genotoxicity within the cell, and ensuring functional protein interactions in a larger, more compartmentalized cell. For hundreds of S-genes, we confirmed the origins of their components (bacterial, archaeal, or generally prokaryotic) by maximum likelihood phylogenies. Remarkably, Bacteria contributed nine-fold more S-genes than Archaea, including a two-fold greater contribution to informational functions. Therefore, there is an additional, large bacterial contribution to the evolution of eukaryotes, implying that fundamental eukaryotic properties do not strictly follow the traditional informational/operational divide for archaeal/bacterial contributions to eukaryogenesis.ConclusionThis study demonstrates the extent and process through which prokaryotic fragments from bacterial and archaeal genes inherited during eukaryogenesis underly the creation of novel chimeric genes with important functions.

CompositeSearch: A Generalized Network Approach for Composite Gene Families Detection

Abstract Genes evolve by point mutations, but also by shuffling, fusion, and fission of genetic fragments. Therefore, similarity between two sequences can be due to common ancestry producing homology, and/or partial sharing of component fragments. Disentangling these processes is especially challenging in large molecular data sets, because of computational time. In this article, we present CompositeSearch, a memory-efficient, fast, and scalable method to detect composite gene families in large data sets (typically in the range of several million sequences). CompositeSearch generalizes the use of similarity networks to detect composite and component gene families with a greater recall, accuracy, and precision than recent programs (FusedTriplets and MosaicFinder). Moreover, CompositeSearch provides user-friendly quality descriptions regarding the distribution and primary sequence conservation of these gene families allowing critical biological analyses of these data.

Bipartite network analysis of gene sharings in the microbial world

Abstract Extensive microbial gene flows affect how we understand virology, microbiology, medical sciences, genetic modification, and evolutionary biology. Phylogenies only provide a narrow view of these gene flows: plasmids and viruses, lacking core genes, cannot be attached to cellular life on phylogenetic trees. Yet viruses and plasmids have a major impact on cellular evolution, affecting both the gene content and the dynamics of microbial communities. Using bipartite graphs that connect up to 149,000 clusters of homologous genes with 8,217 related and unrelated genomes, we can in particular show patterns of gene sharing that do not map neatly with the organismal phylogeny. Homologous genes are recycled by lateral gene transfer, and multiple copies of homologous genes are carried by otherwise completely unrelated (and possibly nested) genomes, that is, viruses, plasmids and prokaryotes. When a homologous gene is present on at least one plasmid or virus and at least one chromosome, a process of “gene externalization,” affected by a postprocessed selected functional bias, takes place, especially in Bacteria. Bipartite graphs give us a view of vertical and horizontal gene flow beyond classic taxonomy on a single very large, analytically tractable, graph that goes beyond the cellular Web of Life.

Hundreds of novel composite genes and chimeric genes with bacterial origins contributed to haloarchaeal evolution

BackgroundHaloarchaea, a major group of archaea, are able to metabolize sugars and to live in oxygenated salty environments. Their physiology and lifestyle strongly contrast with that of their archaeal ancestors. Amino acid optimizations, which lowered the isoelectric point of haloarchaeal proteins, and abundant lateral gene transfers from bacteria have been invoked to explain this deep evolutionary transition. We use network analyses to show that the evolution of novel genes exclusive to Haloarchaea also contributed to the evolution of this group.ResultsWe report the creation of 320 novel composite genes, both early in the evolution of Haloarchaea during haloarchaeal genesis and later in diverged haloarchaeal groups. One hundred and twenty-six of these novel composite genes derived from genetic material from bacterial genomes. These latter genes, largely involved in metabolic functions but also in oxygenic lifestyle, constitute a different gene pool from the laterally acquired bacterial genes formerly identified. These novel composite genes were likely advantageous for their hosts, since they show significant residence times in haloarchaeal genomes—consistent with a long phylogenetic history involving vertical descent and lateral gene transfer—and encode proteins with optimized isoelectric points.ConclusionsOverall, our work encourages a systematic search for composite genes across all archaeal major groups, in order to better understand the origins of novel prokaryotic genes, and in order to test to what extent archaea might have adjusted their lifestyles by incorporating and recycling laterally acquired bacterial genetic fragments into new archaeal genes.