- Article -
| In Silico Biology 9, 0013 (2009); ©2009, Bioinformation Systems e.V. |
Evolutionary analysis for the functional divergence of the Spo0A protein: the key sporulation control element
Andrés Julián Gutiérrez Escobar* and Dolly Montoya Castaño
Instituto de Biotecnología, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bioprocesses and Bioprospecting Research Group
* Corresponding author
Email: andresgutierrez@colombia.com
Edited by H. Michael; received August 30, 2008; revised and accepted March 12, 2009; published July 26, 2009
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