Ribosome inactivating proteins from an evolutionary perspective

LAPADULA WJ; JURI AYUB M

TOXICON

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2017

0041-0101

Ribosome Inactivating Proteins (RIPs) are rRNA N-glycosidases thatinhibit protein synthesis through the elimination of a single adenine residuefrom 28S rRNA. Many of these toxins have been characterized in depth from abiochemical and molecular point of view. In addition, their potential use inmedicine as highly selective toxins is being explored. In contrast, theevolutionary history of RIP encoding genes has remained traditionallyunderexplored. In recent years, accumulation of large genomic data has fueledresearch on this issue and revealed unexpected information about the origin andevolution of RIP toxins. In this review we summarize the current evidenceavailable on the occurrence of different evolutionary mechanisms (geneduplication and losses, horizontal gene transfer, synthesis de novo and domain combination) involvedin the evolution of the RIP gene family. Finally, we propose a revisednomenclature for RIP genes based on their evolutionary history.