MBE Advance Access published online on April 2, 2003
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msg079
Molecular Biology and Evolution © Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution 2003; all rights reserved
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1 Departamento de Bioquímica y Fisiología y Genética Molecular-IBGM, Universidad de Valladolid-CSIC, Valladolid 47005, Spain
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: opabinia{at}ibgm.uva.es.
The Lipocalins are an ancient protein family whose expression is currently confirmed in bacteria, protoctists, plants, arthropods and chordates. The evolution of this protein family has been assessed previously using amino acid sequence phylogenies. In this report we use an independent set of characters derived from the gene structure (exon-intron arrangement) to infer a new lipocalin phylogeny. We also present the novel gene structure of three insect lipocalins. The position and phase of introns are well preserved among lipocalin clades when mapped onto a protein sequence alignment, suggesting the homologous nature of these introns. Because of this homology, we use the intron position and phase of twenty-three lipocalin genes to reconstruct a phylogeny by maximum parsimony and distance methods. These phylogenies are very similar to the phylogenies derived from protein sequence. This result is confirmed by congruence analysis, and a consensus tree shows the commonalities between the two source trees. Interestingly, the intron arrangement phylogeny shows that metazoan lipocalins have more introns, and that intron gains have happened in the C-termini of chordate lipocalins. We also analyze the relationship of intron arrangement and protein tertiary structure, as well as the relationship of lipocalins with members of the proposed structural superfamily of calycins. Our congruence analysis validates the gene structure data as a source of phylogenetic information, and helps us to further refine our hypothesis on the evolutionary history of lipocalins. Key Words:
lipocalin, calycin, molecular evolution, gene phylogeny, exon-intron, intron evolution
© 2003 Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution
Original Articles
Exon-Intron Structure and Evolution of the Lipocalin Gene Family
2 Departamento de Genética, Universidad de Sevilla, Apartado 1095, Sevilla 41080, Spain
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