Thursday, February 12, 2009

Elongation Factor Genes in Green Algae

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Two key genes of the translational apparatus, elongation factor-1 alpha (EF-1alpha) and elongation factor-like (EFL) have an almost mutually exclusive distribution in eukaryotes. In the green plant lineage, the Chlorophyta encode EFL except Acetabularia where EF-1alpha is found, and the Streptophyta possess EF-1alpha except Mesostigma, which has EFL.

These results raise questions about evolutionary patterns of gain and loss of EF-1alpha and EFL. A previous study launched the hypothesis that EF-1alpha was the primitive state and that EFL was gained once in the ancestor of the green plants, followed by differential loss of EF-1alpha or EFL in the principal clades of the Viridiplantae.

In order to gain more insight in the distribution of EF-1alpha and EFL in green plants and test this hypothesis we screened the presence of the genes in a large sample of green algae and analyzed their gain-loss dynamics in a maximum likelihood framework using continuous-time Markov models.

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