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MBE Advance Access published online on December 20, 2005
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msj080
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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@oxfordjournals.org
Accepted December 14, 2005

Research Article

Comparative Analysis of Bacterial-Origin Genes for Plant Mitochondrial Ribosomal Proteins

Linda Bonen 1 * and Sophie Calixte 1

1 Biology Department, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada K1N 6N5

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Linda Bonen, E-mail: lbonen{at}science.uottawa.ca


  Abstract

Mitochondrial ribosomes contain bacterial-type proteins reflecting their endosymbiotic heritage and a subset of these genes is retained within the mitochondrion in land plants. Variation in gene location is observed however, because migration to the nucleus is still an ongoing evolutionary process in plants. To gain insight into adaptation events related to successful gene transfer, we have compiled data for bacterial-origin mitochondrial-type ribosomal protein genes from the completely-sequenced Arabidopsis and rice genomes. Approximately 75% of such nuclear-located genes encode amino-terminal extensions relative to their E. coli counterparts, and of that set, only about 30% have introns at (or near) the junction in support of an exon shuffling-type recruitment of upstream expression/targeting signals. We find that genes which were transferred to the nucleus early in eukaryotic evolution have on average about two-fold higher density of introns within the core ribosomal protein sequences than do those that moved to the nucleus more recently. About 20% of such introns are at positions identical to those in human orthologs, consistent with their ancestral presence. Plant mitochondrial-type ribosomal protein genes have dispersed chromosomal locations in the nucleus, and about 20% of them are present in multiple unlinked copies. This study provides new insights into the evolutionary history of endosymbiotic bacterial-type genes which have been transferred from the mitochondrion to the nucleus.

Keywords: Ribosomal protein; mitochondria; introns; evolution; gene transfer; plant; human.
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