The evolutionary landscape of the Rab family in chordates.

The evolutionary landscape of the Rab family in chordates.
Cell Mol Life Sci. 2019 Apr 26;:
Authors: Coppola U, Ristoratore F, Albalat R, D'Aniello S
Abstract
Intracellular traffic amongst organelles represents a key feature for eukaryotes and is orchestrated principally by members of Rab family, the largest within Ras superfamily. Given that variations in Rab repertoire have been fundamental in animal diversification, we provided the most exhaustive survey regarding the Rab toolkit of chordates. Our findings reveal the existence of 42 metazoan conserved subfamilies exhibiting a univocal intron/exon structure preserved from cnidarians to vertebrates. Since the current view does not capture the Rab complexity, we propose a new Rab family classification in three distinct monophyletic clades. The Rab complement of chordates shows a dramatic diversification due to genome duplications and independent gene duplications and losses with sharp differences amongst cephalochordates, tunicates and gnathostome vertebrates. Strikingly, the analysis of the domain architecture of this family highlighted the existence of chimeric calcium-binding Rabs, which are animal novelties characterized by a complex evolutionary history in gnathostomes and whose role in cellular metabolism is obscure. This work provides novel insights in the knowledge of Rab family: our hypothesis is that chordates represent a hotspot of Rab variability, with many events of gen...

Source: Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences : CMLS - April 25, 2019 Category: Cytology Authors: Coppola U, Ristoratore F, Albalat R, D'Aniello S Tags: Cell Mol Life Sci Source Type: research