Evolution and characteristics of the membrane proteome

• Membrane proteins are found in all kingdoms of life and have a diverse set of functions and occupy key roles in many biological systems.  The majority of integral membrane proteins span the membrane with one or more transmembrane alpha helices, which both anchors the protein in the membrane and is crucial for their role in cell-cell interactions and signaling over the membrane. Herein, we have determined all alpha helical transmembrane proteins from 24 complete eukaryotic proteomes, which spans the four eukaryotic super groups chromalveolates, plants, excavates and unikonts. Hence, for the first time we are able to investigate the evolutionary history of the membrane proteome. In total we identify 100 955 membrane proteins among the more than 400 000 investigated proteins. We are able to place 91% of the membrane proteins into candidate families using Markov clustering based on sequence similarity and Pfam protein family affiliation. We provide evidence that most of the transporter and enzyme family repertoire of present eukaryotes was present already in the last common ancestor of all eukaryotes. Moreover, we discuss the functional nature of loss and gain of membrane protein families across eukaryotes and provide a comprehensive resource of the evolutionary history of the human membrane proteome.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Biologi -- Bioinformatik och systembiologi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Biological Sciences -- Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Biologi -- Evolutionsbiologi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Biological Sciences -- Evolutionary Biology (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Biologi -- Biokemi och molekylärbiologi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Biological Sciences -- Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Membrane proteins

membrane proteome

comparative genomics

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

ovr (subject category)