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MBE Advance Access published online on July 27, 2005
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msi221
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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
Accepted July 13, 2005

Letter

The Presence of a Haloarchaeal Type Tyrosyl tRNA Synthetase Marks the Opisthokonts as Monophyletic

Jinling Huang 1*, Ying Xu 2, and Johann Peter Gogarten 3

1 Department of Biology, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858, USA; NASA Astrobiology Institute at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA; Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA
2 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30605, USA
3 Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Jinling Huang, E-mail: huangj{at}mail.ecu.edu


  Abstract

Lateral gene transfer plays an important role in the evolution of life. Events of ancient gene transfer can transmit genetic novelties to descendent lineages and subsequently shape their genetic systems. We here present the analyses of the gene encoding tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase (tyrRS), which reveal two eukaryotic tyrRS lineages, one including the opisthokonts and the other the remaining eukaryotes.

The different origins of tyrRS lineages between the opisthokonts and the remaining eukaryotes indicate a likely case of ancient lateral gene transfer of tyrRS from an archaeon to the opisthokonts, which lends further support for the monophyly of the latter group. Ancient paralogy followed by differential gene loss is an alternative, albeit less parsimonious explanation for the distribution of the two eukaryotic tyrRS types. In either case, the presence of a haloarchaeal tyrRS type in the opisthokonts marks this group as monophyletic. This finding also points to the potential utility of ancient gene transfer events as molecular markers for major organismal lineages.

Keywords: ancient gene transfer; opisthokonts; tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase; eukaryotic evolution.
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