Research article
On the nature of fur evolution: A phylogenetic approach in Actinobacteria
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* Corresponding author: Catarina L Santos cls@ibmc.up.pt
BMC Evolutionary Biology 2008, 8:185 doi:10.1186/1471-2148-8-185
Major role of horizontal gene transfer in the evolution of Fur across bacterial divisions
Morgan Price (2008-10-14 10:17) Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
Santos and colleagues propose a scenario for the evolution of Fur within Actinobacteria in which duplication within lineages is the major mechanism. However, for most of their analyses, they considered only homologs within the Actinobacteria, which might cause them to miss horizontal gene transfer events. A preliminary analysis with the MicrobesOnline tree-browser suggests that some members of subgroups C and D were acquired from other bacterial divisions long after the divergence of the Actinobacteria. For example, see the tree-browser pages for a group C gene, FRAAL5117 from Frankia alni ACN14a:
http://www.microbesonline.org/cgi-bin/treeBrowse.cgi?locus=1881961>ree1881961=COG.735.1&cluster=70&ngenes=50&show=species
and for a group D gene, SAV_3053 from Streptomyces avermitilis:
http://www.microbesonline.org/cgi-bin/treeBrowse.cgi?locus=226120>ree226120=COG.735.1&cluster=70&ngenes=50&show=species
Both genes lack close homologs in other Actinobacteria (except for other organisms in the same genus) but have close homologs in bacteria from other phyla.
Competing interests
None declared
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