Characterization of Histone Genes from the Bivalve Lucina Pectinata.

Lucina pectinata is a clam that lives in sulfide-rich environments and houses intracellular sulfide-oxidizing endosymbionts. To identify new Lucina pectinata proteins, we produced libraries for genome and transcriptome sequencing and assembled them de novo. We searched for histone-like sequences using the Lucina pectinata histone H3 partial nucleotide sequence against our previously described genome assembly to obtain the complete coding region and identify H3 coding sequences from mollusk sequences in Genbank. Solen marginatus histone nucleotide sequences were used as query sequences using the genome and transcriptome assemblies to identify the Lucina pectinata H1, H2A, H2B and H4 genes and mRNAs and obtained the complete coding regions of the five histone genes by RT-PCR combined with automated Sanger DNA sequencing. The amino acid sequence conservation between the Lucina pectinata and Solen marginatus histones was: 77%, 93%, 83%, 96% and 97% for H1, H2A, H2B, H3 and H4, respectively. As expected, the H3 and H4 proteins were the most conserved and the H1 proteins were most similar to H1's from aquatic organisms like Crassostrea gigas, Aplysia californica, Mytilus trossulus and Biomphalaria glabrata. The Lucina pectinata draft genome and transcriptome assemblies, obtained by semiconductor sequencing, were adequate for identification of conserved proteins as evidenced by our results for the histone genes.

Correction: Evolution of the Twist Subfamily Vertebrate Proteins: Discovery of a Signature Motif and Origin of the Twist1 Glycine-Rich Motifs in the Amino-Terminus Disordered Domain.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0161029.].

Evolution of the Twist Subfamily Vertebrate Proteins: Discovery of a Signature Motif and Origin of the Twist1 Glycine-Rich Motifs in the Amino-Terminus Disordered Domain.

Twist proteins belong to the basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) family of multifunctional transcriptional factors. These factors are known to use domains other than the common bHLH in protein-protein interactions. There has been much work characterizing the bHLH domain and the C-terminus in protein-protein interactions but despite a few attempts more focus is needed at the N-terminus. Since the region of highest diversity in Twist proteins is the N-terminus, we analyzed the conservation of this region in different vertebrate Twist proteins and study the sequence differences between Twist1 and Twist2 with emphasis on the glycine-rich regions found in Twist1. We found a highly conserved sequence motif in all Twist1 (SSSPVSPADDSLSNSEEE) and Twist2 (SSSPVSPVDSLGTSEEE) mammalian species with unknown function. Through sequence comparison we demonstrate that the Twist protein family ancestor was "Twist2-like" and the two glycine-rich regions found in Twist1 sequences were acquired late in evolution, apparently not at the same time. The second glycine-rich region started developing first in the fish vertebrate group, while the first glycine region arose afterwards within the reptiles. Disordered domain and secondary structure predictions showed that the amino acid sequence and disorder feature found at the N-terminus is highly evolutionary conserved and could be a functional site that interacts with other proteins. Detailed examination of the glycine-rich regions in the N-terminus of Twist1 demonstrate that the first region is completely aliphatic while the second region contains some polar residues that could be subject to post-translational modification. Phylogenetic and sequence space analysis showed that the Twist1 subfamily is the result of a gene duplication during Twist2 vertebrate fish evolution, and has undergone more evolutionary drift than Twist2. We identified a new signature motif that is characteristic of each Twist paralog and identified important residues within this motif that can be used to distinguish between these two paralogs, which will help reduce Twist1 and Twist2 sequence annotation errors in public databases.

MPI-PHYLIP: parallelizing computationally intensive phylogenetic analysis routines for the analysis of large protein families.

BACKGROUND: Phylogenetic study of protein sequences provides unique and valuable insights into the molecular and genetic basis of important medical and epidemiological problems as well as insights about the origins and development of physiological features in present day organisms. Consensus phylogenies based on the bootstrap and other resampling methods play a crucial part in analyzing the robustness of the trees produced for these analyses. METHODOLOGY: Our focus was to increase the number of bootstrap replications that can be performed on large protein datasets using the maximum parsimony, distance matrix, and maximum likelihood methods. We have modified the PHYLIP package using MPI to enable large-scale phylogenetic study of protein sequences, using a statistically robust number of bootstrapped datasets, to be performed in a moderate amount of time. This paper discusses the methodology used to parallelize the PHYLIP programs and reports the performance of the parallel PHYLIP programs that are relevant to the study of protein evolution on several protein datasets. CONCLUSIONS: Calculations that currently take a few days on a state of the art desktop workstation are reduced to calculations that can be performed over lunchtime on a modern parallel computer. Of the three protein methods tested, the maximum likelihood method scales the best, followed by the distance method, and then the maximum parsimony method. However, the maximum likelihood method requires significant memory resources, which limits its application to more moderately sized protein datasets.

Functional, genetic and bioinformatic characterization of a calcium/calmodulin kinase gene in Sporothrix schenckii.

BACKGROUND: Sporothrix schenckii is a pathogenic, dimorphic fungus, the etiological agent of sporotrichosis, a subcutaneous lymphatic mycosis. Dimorphism in S. schenckii responds to second messengers such as cAMP and calcium, suggesting the possible involvement of a calcium/calmodulin kinase in its regulation. In this study we describe a novel calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase gene in S. schenckii, sscmk1, and the effects of inhibitors of calmodulin and calcium/calmodulin kinases on the yeast to mycelium transition and the yeast cell cycle. RESULTS: Using the PCR homology approach a new member of the calcium/calmodulin kinase family, SSCMK1, was identified in this fungus. The cDNA sequence of sscmk1 revealed an open reading frame of 1,221 nucleotides encoding a 407 amino acid protein with a predicted molecular weight of 45.6 kDa. The genomic sequence of sscmk1 revealed the same ORF interrupted by five introns. Bioinformatic analyses of SSCMK1 showed that this protein had the distinctive features that characterize a calcium/calmodulin protein kinase: a serine/threonine protein kinase domain and a calmodulin-binding domain. When compared to homologues from seven species of filamentous fungi, SSCMK1 showed substantial similarities, except for a large and highly variable region that encompasses positions 330 - 380 of the multiple sequence alignment. Inhibition studies using calmodulin inhibitor W-7, and calcium/calmodulin kinase inhibitors, KN-62 and lavendustin C, were found to inhibit budding by cells induced to re-enter the yeast cell cycle and to favor the yeast to mycelium transition. CONCLUSION: This study constitutes the first evidence of the presence of a calcium/calmodulin kinase-encoding gene in S. schenckii and its possible involvement as an effector of dimorphism in this fungus. These results suggest that a calcium/calmodulin dependent signaling pathway could be involved in the regulation of dimorphism in this fungus. The results suggest that the calcium/calmodulin kinases of yeasts are evolutionarily distinct from those in filamentous fungi.