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On plant defense signaling networks and early land plant evolution.

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On plant defense signaling networks and early land plant evolution.
Commun Integr Biol. 2018;11(3):1-14
Authors: de Vries S, de Vries J, von Dahlen JK, Gould SB, Archibald JM, Rose LE, Slamovits C…

Nephromyces Encodes a Urate Metabolism Pathway and Predicted Peroxisomes, Demonstrating That These Are Not Ancient Losses of Apicomplexans.

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Nephromyces Encodes a Urate Metabolism Pathway and Predicted Peroxisomes, Demonstrating That These Are Not Ancient Losses of Apicomplexans.
Genome Biol Evol. 2019 01 01;11(1):41-53
Authors: Paight…

An updated phylogeny of the Alphaproteobacteria reveals that the parasitic Rickettsiales and Holosporales have independent origins.

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An updated phylogeny of the Alphaproteobacteria reveals that the parasitic Rickettsiales and Holosporales have independent origins.
Elife. 2019 Feb 25;8:
Authors: Muñoz-Gómez SA, Hess S, Burger G,…

An updated phylogeny of the <em>Alphaproteobacteria</em> reveals that the parasitic <em>Rickettsiales</em> and <em>Holosporales</em> have independent origins

The Alphaproteobacteria is an extraordinarily diverse and ancient group of bacteria. Previous attempts to infer its deep phylogeny have been plagued with methodological artefacts. To overcome this, we analyzed a dataset of 200 single-copy and conserved genes and employed diverse strategies to reduce compositional artefacts. Such strategies include using novel dataset-specific profile mixture models and recoding schemes, and removing sites, genes and taxa that are compositionally biased. We show…

Nephromyces Encodes a Urate Metabolism Pathway and Predicted Peroxisomes, Demonstrating That These Are Not Ancient Losses of Apicomplexans

The phylum Apicomplexa is a quintessentially parasitic lineage, whose members infect a broad range of animals. One exception to this may be the apicomplexan genus Nephromyces, which has been described as having a mutualistic relationship with its host. Here we analyze transcriptome data from Nephromyces and its parasitic sister taxon, Cardiosporidium, revealing an ancestral purine degradation pathway thought to have been lost early in apicomplexan evolution. The predicted localization of many of…

On plant defense signaling networks and early land plant evolution

All land plants must cope with phytopathogens. Algae face pathogens, too, and it is reasonable to assume that some of the strategies for dealing with pathogens evolved prior to the origin of embryophytes – plant terrestrialization simply changed the nature of the plant-pathogen interactions. Here we highlight that many potential components of the angiosperm defense toolkit are i) found in streptophyte algae and non-flowering embryophytes and ii) might be used in non-flowering plant defense as…

The New Red Algal Subphylum Proteorhodophytina Comprises the Largest and Most Divergent Plastid Genomes Known.

Red algal plastid genomes are often considered ancestral and evolutionarily stable, and thus more closely resembling the last common ancestral plastid genome of all photosynthetic eukaryotes [1, 2]. However, sampling of red algal diversity is still quite limited (e.g., [2-5]). We aimed to remedy this problem. To this end, we sequenced six new plastid genomes …

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The New Red Algal Subphylum Proteorhodophytina Comprises the Largest and Most Divergent Plastid Genomes Known

Red algal plastid genomes are often considered ancestral and evolutionarily stable, and thus more closely resembling the last common ancestral plastid genome of all photosynthetic eukaryotes [1, 2]. However, sampling of red algal diversity is still quite limited (e.g., [2-5]). We aimed to remedy this problem. To this end, we sequenced six new plastid genomes from four undersampled and phylogenetically disparate red algal classes (Porphyridiophyceae, Stylonematophyceae, Compsopogonophyceae, and…

Lynn Margulis and the endosymbiont hypothesis: 50 years later.

The 1967 article “On the Origin of Mitosing Cells” in the Journal of Theoretical Biology by Lynn Margulis (then Lynn Sagan) is widely regarded as stimulating renewed interest in the long-dormant endosymbiont hypothesis of organelle origins. In her article, not only did Margulis champion an endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria and plastids from bacterial ancestors, but …

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Phenylpropanoid biosynthesis origins in plant algal relatives

Great lab news! Sophie DeVries, our Killam Postdoc and her partner Jan DeVries (Archibald Lab) have just published a very nice research story in Plant & Cell Physiology. The paper is entitled “How Embryophytic is the Biosynthesis of Phenylpropanoids and their Derivatives in Streptophyte Algae?”, and sheds new light on how the earliest land plants …

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