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MBE Advance Access published online on November 13, 2008
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msn263
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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

Unexpected dynamic gene family evolution in algal actins

Min Wu1, Josep M. Comeron1, Hwan Su Yoon1,2 and Debashish Bhattacharya1,*

1 University of Iowa, Department of Biological Sciences and the Roy J. Carver Center for Comparative Genomics, Iowa City, IA 52242
2 Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, West Boothbay Harbor, ME 04575, USA

* Corresponding author: University of Iowa, Department of Biology and the Roy J. Carver Center for Comparative Genomics, 446 Biology Building, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, USA Telephone: (319) 335-1977, Fax: (319) 335-1069, Email: debashi-bhattacharya{at}uiowa.edu

Received for publication July 25, 2008. Revision received November 3, 2008. Accepted for publication November 7, 2008.

Actin is a conserved cytoskeletal protein that is well studied in model organisms although much less is known about actin molecular evolution in taxonomically diverse algae. Here we analyzed 107 novel partial algal actin sequences and report some unexpected results. First, monophyletic actin gene families in multiple, phylogenetically distantly related algal taxa contain two distinct clades of sequences. Surprisingly, one of these clades contains highly conserved sequences, whereas the other has multiple members with a significantly elevated substitution rate. This rate difference is associated with an excess of synonymous substitutions, strongly suggesting that both isoforms are active. These results paint a novel picture of actin gene evolution in algae showing it to be a remarkably dynamic system with duplication, homogenization, and potential functional diversification occurring independently in distantly related lineages.

Key Words: actin • chromalveolates • gene duplication • rate acceleration • red algae


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