Clarke, Michael and Lohan, Amanda and Liu, Bernard and Lagkouvardos, Ilias and Roy, Scott and Zafar, Nikhat and Bertelli, Claire and Schilde, Christina and Kianianmomeni, Arash and Burglin, Thomas R. and Frech, Christian and Turcotte, Bernard and Kopec, Klaus O. and Synnott, John M. and Choo, Caleb and Paponov, Ivan and Finkler, Aliza and Soon Heng Tan, Chris and Hutchins, Andrew P. and Weinmeier, Thomas and Ratteri, Thomas and Chu, Jeffery SC and Gimenez, Gregory and Irimia, Manuel and Rigden, Daniel J. and Fitzpatrick, David A. and Lorenzo-Morales, Jacob and Baterman, Alex and Chiu, Cheng-Hsun and Tang, Petrus and Hegemann, Peter and Fromm, Hillel and Raoult, Didier and Greub, Gilbert and Miranda-Saavedra, Diego and Chen, Nansheng and Nash, Piers and Ginger, Michael L. and Horn, Matthias and Schaap, Pauline and Caler, Lis and Loftus, Brendan J. (2013) Genome of Acanthamoeba castellanii highlights extensive lateral gene transfer and early evolution of tyrosine kinase signaling. Genome Biology, 14 (R11). ISSN 1465-6906

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Abstract

Background The Amoebozoa constitute one of the primary divisio ns of eukaryotes encompassing taxa of both biomedic al and evolutionary importance, yet its genomic divers ity remains largely unsampled. Here we present an analysis of a whole genome assembly of Acanthamoeba castellanii ( Ac ) the first representative from a solitary free-living amoebozoan. Results Ac encodes 15,455 compact intron rich genes a signifi cant number of which are predicted to have arisen through interkingdom lateral gene transfer (LGT). A majority of the LGT candidates have undergone a substantial degree of intronization and Ac appears to have incorporated them into established transcriptional programs. Ac manifests a complex signaling and cell communicati on repertoire including a complete tyrosine kinase signaling toolkit and a comparable diversity of predicted extracellular receptors to that found in the facultatively multicellular dictyostelids. An impor tant environmental host of a diverse range of bacte ria and viruses, Ac utilizes a diverse repertoire of predicted pattern recognition receptors many with predicted orthologous functions in the innate immune systems of higher organisms. Conclusions Our analysis highlights the important role of LGT i n the biology of Ac and in the diversification of microbial eukaryotes. The early evolution of a key signaling facility implicated in the evolution of metazoan multicellularity strongly argues for its emergence early in the Unikont lineage. Overall the availabil ity of an Ac genome should aid in deciphering the biology of th e Amoebozoa and facilitate functional genomic studi es in this important model organism and environmental host.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Acanthamoeba castellanii; genome; lateral gene transfer; tyrosine kinase; signal transduction; amoeba; evolution;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > Biology
Item ID:	4226
Depositing User:	David Fitzpatrick
Date Deposited:	13 May 2013 16:11
Journal or Publication Title:	Genome Biology
Publisher:	BioMed Central
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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