Functional Constraints on Replacing an Essential Gene with Its Ancient and Modern Homologs

2017-07-01
Kacar, Betul
Garmendia, Eva
Tunçbağ, Nurcan
Andersson, Dan I.
Hughes, Diarmaid
Show full item record
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
200
views
179
downloads
Genes encoding proteins that carry out essential informational tasks in the cell, in particular where multiple interaction partners are involved, are less likely to be transferable to a foreign organism. Here, we investigated the constraints on transfer of a gene encoding a highly conserved informational protein, translation elongation factor Tu (EF-Tu), by systematically replacing the endogenous tufA gene in the Escherichia coli genome with its extant and ancestral homologs. The extant homologs represented tuf variants from both near and distant homologous organisms. The ancestral homologs represented phylogenetically resurrected tuf sequences dating from 0.7 to 3.6 billion years ago (bya). Our results demonstrate that all of the foreign tuf genes are transferable to the E. coli genome, provided that an additional copy of the EF-Tu gene, tufB, remains present in the E. coli genome. However, when the tufB gene was removed, only the variants obtained from the gammaproteobacterial family (extant and ancestral) supported growth which demonstrates the limited functional interchangeability of E. coli tuf with its homologs. Relative bacterial fitness correlated with the evolutionary distance of the extant tuf homologs inserted into the E. coli genome. This reduced fitness was associated with reduced levels of EF-Tu and reduced rates of protein synthesis. Increasing the expression of tuf partially ameliorated these fitness costs. In summary, our analysis suggests that the functional conservation of protein activity, the amount of protein expressed, and its network connectivity act to constrain the successful transfer of this essential gene into foreign bacteria.
EF-Tu, Horizontal gene transfer, Ancient genes, Proteobacteria
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/32151
Graduate School of Informatics, Article

Suggestions

Partially Observable Gene Regulatory Network Control Without a Boundary on Horizon
Erdogdu, Utku; Polat, Faruk; Alhajj, Reda (2012-11-09)
Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) govern the protein transcription process in the cell and interactions among genes play a vital role in determining the biosynthesis rate of proteins. By using intervention techniques discovered by biological research it is possible to control a GRN, thus promoting or demoting the expression rate of a certain gene. In this work, this control task is studied in a partially observable setting where interventions lack perfect knowledge of the expression level of all genes. Moreov...
Inference of Gene Regulatory Networks Via Multiple Data Sources and a Recommendation Method
Ozsoy, Makbule Gulcin; Polat, Faruk; Alhajj, Reda (2015-11-12)
Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) are composed of biological components, including genes, proteins and metabolites, and their interactions. In general, computational methods are used to infer the connections among these components. However, computational methods should take into account the general features of the GRNs, which are sparseness, scale-free topology, modularity and structure of the inferred networks. In this work, observing the common aspects between recommendation systems and GRNs, we decided to ...
Expression Analysis of TaNAC69-1 and TtNAMB-2, Wheat NAC Family Transcription Factor Genes Under Abiotic Stress Conditions in Durum Wheat (Triticum turgidum)
Baloglu, Mehmet Cengiz; Oz, Mehmet Tufan; Öktem, Hüseyin Avni; Yücel, Ayşe Meral (2012-10-01)
NAC-type plant-specific transcription factor genes encode proteins that play important roles in abiotic stress responses, as well as regulation of plant development. In the current study, expression profiles of wheat NAC-type transcription factor genes, TaNAC69-1 and TtNAMB-2, were examined under drought, salt, cold, and heat stress conditions in wheat. Based on reverse transcription quantitative PCR results, TaNAC69-1 was strongly expressed under drought, salinity, and high-temperature stress conditions. C...
Application of copulas in graphical models for inference of biological systems
Dokuzoğlu, Damla; Purutçuoğlu Gazi, Vilda; Department of Statistics (2016)
Naturally, genes interact with each other by forming a complicated network and the relationship between groups of genes can be showed by different functions as gene networks. Recently, there has been a growing concern in uncovering these complex structures from gene expression data by modeling them mathematically. The Gaussian graphical model (GGM) is one of the very popular parametric approaches for modelling the underlying types of biochemical systems. In this study, we evaluate the performance of this pr...
Molecular cloning, characterization, and expression analysis of a gene encoding a Ran binding protein (RanBP) in Cucumis melo L.
Baloglu, Mehmet Cengiz; Zakharov, Florence Negre; Öktem, Hüseyin Avni; Yücel, Ayşe Meral (2011-01-01)
Ran binding proteins (RanBPs) are highly conserved members of the GTP-binding protein family that are involved in nuclear protein export between the nucleus and the cytoplasm. In this study, a CmRanBP gene from a melon was isolated (Cucumis melo L.) using the RACE (rapid amplification of cDNA ends) method. The 778 basepair long melon, with a RanBP cDNA encoding consisting of 197 amino acids (22.2 kDa protein), was characterized (GenBank accession no: EU853459). The predicted amino acid sequence of CmRanBP w...
Citation Formats
B. Kacar, E. Garmendia, N. Tunçbağ, D. I. Andersson, and D. Hughes, “Functional Constraints on Replacing an Essential Gene with Its Ancient and Modern Homologs,” MBIO, pp. 0–0, 2017, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/32151.
METU IIS - Integrated Information Service open@metu.edu.tr