U.S. Department of Energy, Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, CA 94598, USA.
Science. 2010 Jul 9;329(5988):223-6. doi: 10.1126/science.1188800.
The multicellular green alga Volvox carteri and its morphologically diverse close relatives (the volvocine algae) are well suited for the investigation of the evolution of multicellularity and development. We sequenced the 138-mega-base pair genome of V. carteri and compared its approximately 14,500 predicted proteins to those of its unicellular relative Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Despite fundamental differences in organismal complexity and life history, the two species have similar protein-coding potentials and few species-specific protein-coding gene predictions. Volvox is enriched in volvocine-algal-specific proteins, including those associated with an expanded and highly compartmentalized extracellular matrix. Our analysis shows that increases in organismal complexity can be associated with modifications of lineage-specific proteins rather than large-scale invention of protein-coding capacity.
多细胞绿藻衣藻及其形态多样的近亲(团藻)非常适合研究多细胞生物的进化和发育。我们对衣藻的 13800 万个碱基对基因组进行了测序,并将其约 14500 个预测蛋白与单细胞近亲莱茵衣藻的蛋白进行了比较。尽管在生物复杂性和生活史方面存在根本差异,但这两个物种具有相似的蛋白编码潜能,且物种特异性蛋白编码基因预测较少。衣藻富含团藻特有的蛋白,包括与扩展和高度分隔的细胞外基质相关的蛋白。我们的分析表明,生物复杂性的增加可能与谱系特异性蛋白的修饰有关,而不是大规模发明蛋白编码能力。