New insights into the evolution and structure of Colletotrichum plant-like subtilisins (CPLSs)

VINICIO ARMIJOS-JARAMILLO; WALTER A. VARGAS; SERENELLA A. SUKNO; MICHAEL R. THON

Communicative & Integrative Biology

Landes Bioscience

Lugar: Austin, TX; Año: 2013 vol. 6 p. 1 - 3

 The Colletotrichumplant-like subtilisins (CPLSs) are a family of proteins found only in speciesof the phytopathogenic fungus Colletotrichum. CPLSs have high similarity to plant subtilisins and our previous work has shownthat they were acquired by an ancient horizontal gene transfer event fromplants. The rapid growth of sequence data in public databases enabled us toreexamine the structure and evolution of the CPLSs. A new plant subtilisinstructural model aided us in refining the tertiary structure of CPLSs. Also,new information about protein interactions of plant subtilisin has provided newinsights into the putative function of CPLSs. The availability of new genomesequences of members of the genus Colletotrichumgave us the opportunity to further validate our hypothesis that the CPLSs areunique to the Colletotrichum lineage.Together, this information furthers our knowledge of the potential role of theCPLSs in pathogenicity and the role of HGT in the genome evolution of plantpathogenic fungi.