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MBE Advance Access published online on May 13, 2008
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msn113
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© The Author 2008. 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

Letter

The guanine nucleotide exchange factors Sec2 and PRONE: candidate synapomorphies for the Opisthokonta and the Archaeplastida

Marek Elias

Charles University in Prague, Charles Faculty of Sciences, Department of Botany Department of Philosophy History of Science, Benatska 2, 128 01 Prague 2, Czech Republic tel.: 0042-0221951648; fax: 0042-0221951645

e-mail: melias{at}natur.cuni.cz

Received for publication February 6, 2008. Revision received May 7, 2008. Accepted for publication May 7, 2008.

Although recent multi-gene phylogenetic analyses support close relationship of Metazoa and Fungi (the eukaryotic supergroup Opisthokonta) and monophyly of eukaryotes with the primary plastid, i.e. Chloroplastida, Rhodophyta, and Glaucophyta (the supergroup Archaeplastida or Plantae), some authors still challenge this scheme. I found that two particular types of guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs, i.e., cofactors of GTPases) might provide a new piece of evidence to resolve this controversy. An exhaustive analysis of available sequence data revealed that Sec2-related proteins, known to serve as GEF for exocytic GTPases of the Rab8/Sec4 subfamily, are restricted to opisthokonts, whereas proteins with the PRONE domain, recently described as novel plant-specific GEFs for RHO family GTPases, occur only in Chloroplastida and Rhodophyta. The results thus point to possible evolutionary innovations in the exocytic apparatus of the ancestral opisthokonts and reveal the probably first plastid-independent trait (i.e., a unique mode of RHO GTPase regulation) exclusive for Chloroplastida+Rhodophyta, further supporting monophyly of these two groups.

Key Words: GTPases • eukaryotes • phylogeny • Opisthokonta • Archaeplastida


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