Publication Date:
2014-09-19
Description:
Calcium signaling is one of the most extensively employed signal transduction mechanisms in life. As life evolved into increasingly complex organisms, Ca 2+ acquired more extensive and varied functions. Here, we compare genes encoding proteins that govern Ca 2+ entry and exit across cells or organelles within organisms of early eukaryotic evolution into fungi, plants, and animals. Recent phylogenomics analyses reveal a complex Ca 2+ signaling machinery in the apusozoan protist Thecamonas trahens , a putative unicellular progenitor of Opisthokonta. We compare T. trahens Ca 2+ signaling to that in a marine bikont protist, Aurantiochytrium limacinum , and demonstrate the conservation of key Ca 2+ signaling molecules in the basally diverging alga Cyanophora paradoxa . Particularly, our findings reveal the conservation of the CatSper channel complex in Au. limacinum and C. paradoxa , suggesting that the CatSper complex likely originated from an ancestral Ca 2+ signaling machinery at the root of early eukaryotic evolution prior to the unikont/bikont split.
Print ISSN:
0737-4038
Electronic ISSN:
1537-1719
Topics:
Biology
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