Gene duplication is a common phenomenon in all life forms and provides resources for novel gene functions. However, the mechanism of duplicated gene evolution and the fate of the duplicated genes are still unclear.

 

Dr. TIAN Zhixi, a professor from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, was focus on functional genomics and genetics of soybean in recent years. This time, his team collaborate with Dr. MA Jinxin from Purdue University and Dr. TANG Tian from Sun Yat-Sen University, did a comprehensive analysis of divergence and conservation of the phosphatidylethanolamine-binding proteins (PEBPs) in two species, Arabidopsis and soybean.

 

Integrating phylogenetic analysis and genome duplication events enabled the deduction of an evolutionary process between the PEBP members. Then, the researchers investigated the functional variations in these PEBP members by performing a series of complementary tests, studying their interactions with Arabidopsis FD protein, their subcellular localizations, and their expression patterns. The results demonstrated that although the functional divergence correlated with duplication age, rapid functional divergences were observed for a few pairs of young duplicates in soybean.

 

A systemic associated analysis of the functional variation and protein sequence divergence of PEBP members reveal critical amino acid residues response for the functional divergence of PEBP members, a subset of which was further validated by transgenic analysis. In addition, the expression pattern variation also plays an important role in the divergence of duplicated genes as well as the amino acid change. This study will strengthen our understanding on how the fates of duplicated genes are determined.

 

This work entitled “Functional Evolution of Phosphatidylethanolamine Binding Proteins in Soybean and Arabidopsis” has been published in Plant Cell online Early Edition on February 6, 2015 (DOI:10.1105/tpc.114.135103).

 

This work was supported by grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China and State Key Laboratory of Plant Cell and Chromosome Engineering.

 

 

A Deduced Evolutionary Process of PEBP Family. (Image by IGDB)

 

AUTHOR CONTACT:

TIAN Zhixi, Ph.D.

Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

E-mail: zxtian@genetics.ac.cn