Molecular Biology and Evolution, Vol 12, 16-27, Copyright © 1995 by Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution
AM Hirsch, HI McKhann, A Reddy, J Liao, Y Fang and CR Marshall
The structural genes for nitrogenase, nifK, nifD, and nifH, are crucial for
nitrogen fixation. Previous phylogenetic analysis of the amino acid
sequence of nifH suggested that this gene had been horizontally transferred
from a proteobacterium to the gram-positive/cyanobacterial clade, although
the confounding effects of paralogous comparisons made interpretation of
the data difficult. An additional test of nif gene horizontal transfer
using nifD was made, but the NifD phylogeny lacked resolution. Here nif
gene phylogeny is addressed with a phylogenetic analysis of a third and
longer nif gene, nifK. As part of the study, the nifK gene of the key taxon
Frankia was sequenced. Parsimony and some distance analyses of the nifK
amino acid sequences provide support for vertical descent of nifK, but
other distance trees provide support for the lateral transfer of the gene.
Bootstrap support was found for both hypotheses in all trees; the nifK data
do not definitively favor one or the other hypothesis. A parsimony analysis
of NifH provides support for horizontal transfer in accord with previous
reports, although bootstrap analysis also shows some support for vertical
descent of the orthologous nifH genes. A wider sampling of taxa and more
sophisticated methods of phylogenetic inference are needed to understand
the evolution of nif genes. The nif genes may also be powerful phylogenetic
tools. If nifK evolved by vertical descent, it provides strong evidence
that the cyanobacteria and proteobacteria are sister groups to the
exclusion of the firmicutes, whereas 16S rRNA sequences are unable to
resolve the relationships of these three major eubacterial lineages.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Assessing horizontal transfer of nifHDK genes in eubacteria: nucleotide sequence of nifK from Frankia strain HFPCcI3
Department of Biology, University of California, Los Angeles 90024-1606.
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