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MBE Advance Access originally published online on March 2, 2005
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2005 22(5):1325-1336; doi:10.1093/molbev/msi124
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

Research Article

Functional Divergence and Horizontal Transfer of Type IV Secretion Systems

A. Carolin Frank, Cecilia M. Alsmark1, Mikael Thollesson and Siv G. E. Andersson

Department of Molecular Evolution, Evolutionary Biology Center, Uppsala University, Uppsala, 752 36, Sweden

E-mail: siv.andersson{at}ebc.uu.se.

The type IV secretion system (TFSSs) is a multifunctional family of translocation pathways that mediate the transfer of DNA among bacteria and deliver DNA and proteins to eukaryotic cells during bacterial infections. Horizontal transmission has dominated the evolution of the TFSS, as demonstrated here by a lack of congruence between the tree topology inferred from components of the TFSS and the presumed bacterial species divergence pattern. A parsimony analysis suggests that conjugation represents the ancestral state and that the divergence from conjugation to secretion of effector molecules has occurred independently at multiple sites in the tree. The result shows that the nodes at which functional shifts have occurred coincide with those of horizontal gene transfers among distantly related bacteria. We suggest that it is the transfer between species that paved the way for the divergence of the TFSSs and discuss the general role of horizontal gene transfers for the evolution of novel gene functions.

Key Words: conjugation • functional divergence • horizontal transfer • secretion • type IV secretion


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