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PMID: 17563102 Published · ppublish English Journal Article Review

Evolution of the cytoskeleton.

BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology ·Vol. 29 ·No. 7 ·2007-07-00 ·Pages 668-77

Erickson HP

Abstract

The eukaryotic cytoskeleton appears to have evolved from ancestral precursors related to prokaryotic FtsZ and MreB. FtsZ and MreB show 40-50% sequence identity across different bacterial and archaeal species. Here I suggest that this represents the limit of divergence that is consistent with maintaining their functions for cytokinesis and cell shape. Previous analyses have noted that tubulin and actin are highly conserved across eukaryotic species, but so divergent from their prokaryotic relatives as to be hardly recognizable from sequence comparisons. One suggestion for this extreme divergence of tubulin and actin is that it occurred as they evolved very different functions from FtsZ and MreB. I will present new arguments favoring this suggestion, and speculate on pathways. Moreover, the extreme conservation of tubulin and actin across eukaryotic species is not due to an intrinsic lack of variability, but is attributed to their acquisition of elaborate mechanisms for assembly dynamics and their interactions with multiple motor and binding proteins. A new structure-based sequence alignment identifies amino acids that are conserved from FtsZ to tubulins. The highly conserved amino acids are not those forming the subunit core or protofilament interface, but those involved in binding and hydrolysis of GTP.

MeSH Terms
Amino Acid Sequence Animals Bacterial Proteins/genetics,metabolism Cytoskeletal Proteins/genetics,metabolism Cytoskeleton/genetics,metabolism Evolution, Molecular Humans Molecular Sequence Data Sequence Homology, Amino Acid Tubulin/chemistry,genetics,metabolism
Chemicals
Bacterial Proteins Cytoskeletal Proteins FtsZ protein, Bacteria Tubulin
Authors & Affiliations
1 authors, click to expand affiliations / ORCID
Erickson Harold P
Department of Cell Biology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710-3709, USA. [email protected]
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Article Info
Journal
BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology
Abbr.
Bioessays
ISSN
0265-9247
DOI
10.1002/bies.20601
Email
[email protected]
Published
2007-07-00
Pages
668-77
Language
English
Region
United States
NLM ID
8510851
PMCID
PMC2630885
Subset
IM
Grants
NIGMS NIH HHS · R01 GM066014 · United States
NIGMS NIH HHS · R01 GM066014-05 · United States
External Links
PubMed source DOI: 10.1002/bies.20601 PMC Full Text View journal details
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