Evolutionary Analysis for the Functional Divergence of the Spo0A Protein: The Key Sporulation Control Element

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Escobar, Andrés Julián Gutiérrez | Casta�o, Dolly Montoya

Affiliations: Instituto de Biotecnología, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bioprocesses and Bioprospecting Research Group, Bogota, Colombia

Note: [] Corresponding author. E-mail: andresgutierrez@colombia.com

Abstract: Sporulation involves inducing scores of genes in a temporally and spatially coordinated cell development programme. Its initiation is controlled by an expanded two-component signal transduction system, termed a phosphorelay. The Spo0A response regulator is the master control element in the decision to sporulate, consisting of a receiver or phosphoacceptor domain and an effector or transcription activation domain having a high degree of sequence conservation. This study examined long-term Spo0A protein evolution for determining whether concerted evolution or purifying selection was the major factor in its evolution. The proportion of synonymous (pS) and non-synonymous nucleotide (pN) differences between Spo0A genes from 28 bacterial species was analysed. DIVERGE software was used for evaluating site-specific amino acids before phylogenetic divergence between Bacillus and Clostridium for detecting site-selective constrains operating on the Spo0A protein. Evolutionary Trace software was used for tracing the phylogenetic markers for this protein.

Keywords: Sporulation, phosphorelay, Spo0A, protein evolution, selective constrains, phylogenetic markers

DOI: 10.3233/ISB-2009-0405

Journal: In Silico Biology, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 149-162, 2009