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Citation for Study 10171

About Citation title: "An Evolutionary Analysis of Lateral Gene Transfer in Thymidylate Synthase Enzymes.".
About This study was previously identified under the legacy study ID S2515 (Status: Published).

Citation

Stern A., Mayrose I., Penn O., Shaul S., Gophna U., & Pupko T. 2010. An Evolutionary Analysis of Lateral Gene Transfer in Thymidylate Synthase Enzymes. Systematic Biology, 59(2): 212-225.

Authors

  • Stern A.
  • Mayrose I.
  • Penn O.
  • Shaul S.
  • Gophna U.
  • Pupko T.

Abstract

Thymidylate synthases (Thy) are key enzymes in the synthesis of deoxythymidylate, one of the four building blocks of DNA. As such, they are essential for all DNA-based forms of life, and therefore implicated in the hypothesized transition from RNA genomes to DNA genomes. Two evolutionally unrelated Thy enzymes, ThyA and ThyX, are known to catalyze the same biochemical reaction. Both enzymes are sporadically distributed within each of the three domains of life in a pattern that suggests multiple non-homologous lateral gene transfer (LGT) events. We present a phylogenetic analysis of the evolution of the two enzymes, aimed at unraveling their entangled evolutionary history and tracing their origin back to early life. A novel probabilistic evolutionary model was developed, which allowed us to compute the posterior probabilities and the posterior expectation of the number of LGT events. Simulation studies were performed to validate the model's ability to accurately detect LGT events, which have occurred throughout a large phylogeny. Applying the model to the Thy data revealed widespread non-homologous LGT between and within all three domains of life. By reconstructing the ThyA and ThyX gene trees, the most likely donor of each LGT event was inferred. The role of viruses in LGT of Thy is finally discussed.

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  • Canonical resource URI: http://purl.org/phylo/treebase/phylows/study/TB2:S10171
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