Browsing by Author "Ralph, Paula E."

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    Evolution of a horizontally acquired legume gene, albumin 1, in the parasitic plant Phelipanche aegyptiaca and related species
    Zhang, Yeting; Fernández-Aparicio, Mónica; Wafula, Eric K.; Das, Malay; Jiao, Yuannian; Wickett, Norman J.; Honaas, Loren A.; Ralph, Paula E.; Wojciechowski, Martin F.; Timko, Michael P.; Yoder, John I.; Westwood, James H.; dePamphilis, Claude W. (2013-02-20)
    Background Parasitic plants, represented by several thousand species of angiosperms, use modified structures known as haustoria to tap into photosynthetic host plants and extract nutrients and water. As a result of their direct plant-plant connections with their host plant, parasitic plants have special opportunities for horizontal gene transfer, the nonsexual transmission of genetic material across species boundaries. There is increasing evidence that parasitic plants have served as recipients and donors of horizontal gene transfer (HGT), but the long-term impacts of eukaryotic HGT in parasitic plants are largely unknown. Results Here we show that a gene encoding albumin 1 KNOTTIN-like protein, closely related to the albumin 1 genes only known from papilionoid legumes, where they serve dual roles as food storage and insect toxin, was found in Phelipanche aegyptiaca and related parasitic species of family Orobanchaceae, and was likely acquired by a Phelipanche ancestor via HGT from a legume host based on phylogenetic analyses. The KNOTTINs are well known for their unique “disulfide through disulfide knot” structure and have been extensively studied in various contexts, including drug design. Genomic sequences from nine related parasite species were obtained, and 3D protein structure simulation tests and evolutionary constraint analyses were performed. The parasite gene we identified here retains the intron structure, six highly conserved cysteine residues necessary to form a KNOTTIN protein, and displays levels of purifying selection like those seen in legumes. The albumin 1 xenogene has evolved through >150 speciation events over ca. 16 million years, forming a small family of differentially expressed genes that may confer novel functions in the parasites. Moreover, further data show that a distantly related parasitic plant, Cuscuta, obtained two copies of albumin 1 KNOTTIN-like genes from legumes through a separate HGT event, suggesting that legume KNOTTIN structures have been repeatedly co-opted by parasitic plants. Conclusions The HGT-derived albumins in Phelipanche represent a novel example of how plants can acquire genes from other plants via HGT that then go on to duplicate, evolve, and retain the specialized features required to perform a unique host-derived function.
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    Horizontal gene transfer is more frequent with increased heterotrophy and contributes to parasite adaptation
    Yang, Zhenzhen; Zhang, Yeting; Wafula, Eric K.; Honaas, Loren A.; Ralph, Paula E.; Jones, Sam; Clarke, Christopher R.; Liu, Siming; Su, Chun; Zhang, Huiting; Altman, Naomi S.; Schuster, Stephan C.; Timko, Michael P.; Yoder, John I.; Westwood, James H.; dePamphilis, Claude W. (2016-11-08)
    Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is the transfer of genetic material across species boundaries and has been a driving force in prokaryotic evolution. HGT involving eukaryotes appears to bemuch less frequent, and the functional implications of HGT in eukaryotes are poorly understood. We test the hypothesis that parasitic plants, because of their intimate feeding contacts with host plant tissues, are especially prone to horizontal gene acquisition. We sought evidence of HGTs in transcriptomes of three parasitic members of Orobanchaceae, a plant family containing species spanning the full spectrum of parasitic capabilities, plus the free-living Lindenbergia. Following initial phylogenetic detection and an extensive validation procedure, 52 high-confidence horizontal transfer events were detected, often from lineages of known host plants and with an increasing number of HGT events in species with the greatest parasitic dependence. Analyses of intron sequences in putative donor and recipient lineages provide evidence for integration of genomic fragments far more often than retro-processed RNA sequences. Purifying selection predominates in functionally transferred sequences, with a small fraction of adaptively evolving sites. HGT-acquired genes are preferentially expressed in the haustorium-the organ of parasitic plants-and are strongly biased in predicted gene functions, suggesting that expression products of horizontally acquired genes are contributing to the unique adaptive feeding structure of parasitic plants.
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    One thousand plant transcriptomes and the phylogenomics of green plants
    Leebens-Mack, James H.; Barker, Michael S.; Carpenter, Eric J.; Deyholos, Michael K.; Gitzendanner, Matthew A.; Graham, Sean W.; Grosse, Ivo; Li, Zheng; Melkonian, Michael; Mirarab, Siavash; Porsch, Martin; Quint, Marcel; Rensing, Stefan A.; Soltis, Douglas E.; Soltis, Pamela S.; Stevenson, Dennis W.; Ullrich, Kristian K.; Wickett, Norman J.; DeGironimo, Lisa; Edger, Patrick P.; Jordon-Thaden, Ingrid E.; Joya, Steve; Liu, Tao; Melkonian, Barbara; Miles, Nicholas W.; Pokorny, Lisa; Quigley, Charlotte; Thomas, Philip; Villarreal, Juan Carlos; Augustin, Megan M.; Barrett, Matthew D.; Baucom, Regina S.; Beerling, David J.; Benstein, Ruben Maximilian; Biffin, Ed; Brockington, Samuel F.; Burge, Dylan O.; Burris, Jason N.; Burris, Kellie P.; Burtet-Sarramegna, Valerie; Caicedo, Ana L.; Cannon, Steven B.; Cebi, Zehra; Chang, Ying; Chater, Caspar; Cheeseman, John M.; Chen, Tao; Clarke, Neil D.; Clayton, Harmony; Covshoff, Sarah; Crandall-Stotler, Barbara J.; Cross, Hugh; dePamphilis, Claude W.; Der, Joshua P.; Determann, Ron; Dickson, Rowan C.; Di Stilio, Veronica S.; Ellis, Shona; Fast, Eva; Feja, Nicole; Field, Katie J.; Filatov, Dmitry A.; Finnegan, Patrick M.; Floyd, Sandra K.; Fogliani, Bruno; Garcia, Nicolas; Gateble, Gildas; Godden, Grant T.; Goh, Falicia (Qi Yun); Greiner, Stephan; Harkess, Alex; Heaney, James Mike; Helliwell, Katherine E.; Heyduk, Karolina; Hibberd, Julian M.; Hodel, Richard G. J.; Hollingsworth, Peter M.; Johnson, Marc T. J.; Jost, Ricarda; Joyce, Blake; Kapralov, Maxim V.; Kazamia, Elena; Kellogg, Elizabeth A.; Koch, Marcus A.; Von Konrat, Matt; Konyves, Kalman; Kutchan, Toni M.; Lam, Vivienne; Larsson, Anders; Leitch, Andrew R.; Lentz, Roswitha; Li, Fay-Wei; Lowe, Andrew J.; Ludwig, Martha; Manos, Paul S.; Mavrodiev, Evgeny; McCormick, Melissa K.; McKain, Michael; McLellan, Tracy; McNeal, Joel R.; Miller, Richard E.; Nelson, Matthew N.; Peng, Yanhui; Ralph, Paula E.; Real, Daniel; Riggins, Chance W.; Ruhsam, Markus; Sage, Rowan F.; Sakai, Ann K.; Scascitella, Moira; Schilling, Edward E.; Schlosser, Eva-Marie; Sederoff, Heike; Servick, Stein; Sessa, Emily B.; Shaw, A. Jonathan; Shaw, Shane W.; Sigel, Erin M.; Skema, Cynthia; Smith, Alison G.; Smithson, Ann; Stewart, C. Neal, Jr.; Stinchcombe, John R.; Szovenyi, Peter; Tate, Jennifer A.; Tiebel, Helga; Trapnell, Dorset; Villegente, Matthieu; Wang, Chun-Neng; Weller, Stephen G.; Wenzel, Michael; Weststrand, Stina; Westwood, James H.; Whigham, Dennis F.; Wu, Shuangxiu; Wulff, Adrien S.; Yang, Yu; Zhu, Dan; Zhuang, Cuili; Zuidof, Jennifer; Chase, Mark W.; Pires, J. Chris; Rothfels, Carl J.; Yu, Jun; Chen, Cui; Chen, Li; Cheng, Shifeng; Li, Juanjuan; Li, Ran; Li, Xia; Lu, Haorong; Ou, Yanxiang; Sun, Xiao; Tan, Xuemei; Tang, Jingbo; Tian, Zhijian; Wang, Feng; Wang, Jun; Wei, Xiaofeng; Xu, Xun; Yan, Zhixiang; Yang, Fan; Zhong, Xiaoni; Zhou, Feiyu; Zhu, Ying; Zhang, Yong; Ayyampalayam, Saravanaraj; Barkman, Todd J.; Nam-Phuong Nguyen; Matasci, Naim; Nelson, David R.; Sayyari, Erfan; Wafula, Eric K.; Walls, Ramona L.; Warnow, Tandy; An, Hong; Arrigo, Nils; Baniaga, Anthony E.; Galuska, Sally; Jorgensen, Stacy A.; Kidder, Thomas I.; Kong, Hanghui; Lu-Irving, Patricia; Marx, Hannah E.; Qi, Xinshuai; Reardon, Chris R.; Sutherland, Brittany L.; Tiley, George P.; Welles, Shana R.; Yu, Rongpei; Zhan, Shing; Gramzow, Lydia; Theissen, Gunter; Wong, Gane Ka-Shu (2019-10-31)
    Green plants (Viridiplantae) include around 450,000-500,000 species(1,2) of great diversity and have important roles in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Here, as part of the One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative, we sequenced the vegetative transcriptomes of 1,124 species that span the diversity of plants in a broad sense (Archaeplastida), including green plants (Viridiplantae), glaucophytes (Glaucophyta) and red algae (Rhodophyta). Our analysis provides a robust phylogenomic framework for examining the evolution of green plants. Most inferred species relationships are well supported across multiple species tree and supermatrix analyses, but discordance among plastid and nuclear gene trees at a few important nodes highlights the complexity of plant genome evolution, including polyploidy, periods of rapid speciation, and extinction. Incomplete sorting of ancestral variation, polyploidization and massive expansions of gene families punctuate the evolutionary history of green plants. Notably, we find that large expansions of gene families preceded the origins of green plants, land plants and vascular plants, whereas whole-genome duplications are inferred to have occurred repeatedly throughout the evolution of flowering plants and ferns. The increasing availability of high-quality plant genome sequences and advances in functional genomics are enabling research on genome evolution across the green tree of life.