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MBE Advance Access published online on September 8, 2004
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msh254
Molecular Biology and Evolution © Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution 2004; all rights reserved
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Accepted September 1, 2004

Research Article

Gene Transfers from Nanoarchaeota to an Ancestor of Diplomonads and Parabasalids

Jan O. Andersson 1*, Stewart W. Sarchfield 2, and Andrew J. Roger 2

1 The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Program in Evolutionary Biology, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4H7, Canada; Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, Uppsala University, Biomedical Center, Box 596, S-751 24 Uppsala, Sweden
2 Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, Uppsala University, Biomedical Center, Box 596, S-751 24 Uppsala, Sweden

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jan.andersson{at}icm.uu.se.


  Abstract

Rare evolutionary events, such as lateral gene transfers and gene fusions, may be useful to pinpoint, and correlate the timing of, key branches across the tree of life. For example, the shared possession of a transferred gene indicates a phylogenetic relationship amongst organismal lineages by virtue of their shared common ancestral recipient. Here we present phylogenetic analyses of prolyl- and alanyl-tRNA synthetase genes that both indicate lateral gene transfer events to an ancestor of the diplomonads and parabasalids from lineages more closely related to the newly discovered archaeal hyperthermophile Nanoarchaeum equitans (Nanoarchaeota), than to Crenarchaeota or Euryarchaeota. The support for this scenario is strong from all applied phylogenetic methods for the alanyl-tRNA sequences, while the phylogenetic analyses of the prolyl-tRNA sequences show some disagreements between methods, indicating that the donor lineage cannot be identified with a high degree of certainty. However, in both trees the diplomonads and parabasalids branch together within the Archaea, strongly suggesting that these two groups of unicellular eukaryotes, often regarded as the two earliest independent offshoots of the eukaryotic lineage, share a common ancestor to the exclusion of the eukaryotic root. Unfortunately, the phylogenetic analyses of these two aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase genes are inconclusive regarding the position of the diplomonad/parabasalid group within the eukaryotes. Our results also show that the lineage leading to Nanoarchaeota branched off from Euryarchaeota and Crenarchaeota before the divergence of diplomonads and parabasalids, that this unexplored archaeal diversity, currently only represented by the hyperthermophilic organism Nanoarchaeum equitans, may include members living in close proximity to mesophilic eukaryotes, and that the presence of split genes in the Nanoarchaeum genome is a derived feature.

Keywords: Nanoarchaeum equitans; Trichomonas vaginalis; Giardia lamblia; lateral gene transfer; phylogeny.
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