Evolution of the PPM-family protein phosphatases in Streptomyces: duplication of catalytic domain and lateral recruitment of additional sensory domains

Weiwen Zhang and Liang Shi

Microbiology Department, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Blvd, PO Box 999, Mail Stop: P7-50, Richland, WA 99352, USA

Correspondence
Weiwen Zhang
weiwen.zhang{at}pnl.gov
Liang Shi
liang.shi{at}pnl.gov


   ABSTRACT
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ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
METHODS
RESULTS
DISCUSSION
REFERENCES
 
Originally identified from eukaryotes, the Mg2+- or Mn2+-dependent protein phosphatases (PPMs) are a diverse group of enzymes whose members include eukaryotic PP2C and some prokaryotic serine/threonine phosphatases. In a previous study, unexpectedly large numbers of PPMs were identified in two Streptomyces genomes. In this work, a phylogenetic analysis was performed with all the PPMs available from a wide variety of microbial sources to determine the evolutionary origin of the Streptomyces PPM proteins. Consistent with earlier hypotheses, the results suggested that the microbial PPMs were relatively recent additions from eukaryotic sources. Results also indicated that the Streptomyces PPMs were divided into two major subfamilies at an early stage of their emergence in Streptomyces genomes. The first subfamily, which contains only six Streptomyces PPMs, possesses a catalytic domain whose sequence and architecture are similar to that of eukaryotic PPMs; the second subfamily contains 89 Streptomyces PPMs that lack the 5a and 5b catalytic domain motifs, similar to the PPMs SpoIIE and RsbU of Bacillus subtilis. Significant gene duplication was observed for the PPMs in the second subfamily. In addition, more than half (54 %) of the Streptomyces PPMs from the second subfamily were found to have at least one additional sensory domain, most commonly the PAS or the GAF domain. Phylogenetic analysis showed that these domains tended to be clustered according to the putative physiological functions rather than taxonomic relationship, implying that they might have arisen as a result of domain recruitment in a late evolutionary stage. This study provides an insight into how Streptomyces spp. may have expanded their PPM-based signal transduction networks to enable them to respond to a greater range of environmental changes.


Abbreviations: PP, protein phosphatase; PPM, Mg2+- or Mn2+-dependent protein phosphatase


   INTRODUCTION
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ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
METHODS
RESULTS
DISCUSSION
REFERENCES
 
The Mg2+- or Mn2+-dependent protein phosphatase (PPM) family is the one of two major serine/threonine phosphatase superfamilies present in both eukaryotes and prokaryotes (Cohen, 1994). Although their sizes vary, all PPMs share a common catalytic domain consisting of nine to eleven signature sequence motifs containing eight conserved amino acid residues (Fig. 1). These conserved amino acids include four aspartates that are directly involved in coordination of the metal ions in the active site. However, some bacterial PPMs, such as SpoIIE and RsbU/X/P of Bacillus subtilis, and Icfg of Synechocystis PCC 6803, lack the 5a and 5b motifs (Fig. 1) (Bork et al., 1996; Shi et al., 1998). Despite the absence of these conserved motifs, the recombinant SpoIIE, RsbU/X/P and Icfg expressed in Escherichia coli are all functional protein serine phosphatases with a high degree of substrate specificity, suggesting that motifs 5a and 5b are not critical for either catalysis or substrate specificity (Shi, 2004). PPMs appear to be ubiquitous in eukaryotes, while the PPM genes are completely absent in some prokaryotic genomes. A recent survey showed that most archaeal genomes lacked PPM encoding genes, and only 51 % of the bacterial genomes surveyed contained ORFs encoding potential PPMs (Kennelly, 2002). Phylogenetic analysis of these bacterial PPM sequences suggested that they might have originated in eukaryotes, and were then acquired by bacteria and archaea via horizontal gene transfer events (Ponting et al., 1999; Kennelly, 2002).



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Fig. 1. Schematic representation of signature sequence of the PPM-family protein phosphatases. Single-letter amino acid code is used. The individual motifs of each family are indicated by the numbers; the sizes of these motifs are not drawn to scale.

 
Most of the antibiotics currently used in medicine are produced by the family of soil-inhabiting bacteria Streptomycetaceae. Cultures of Streptomyces spp. synthesize these compounds as secondary metabolites, either following the rapid growth phase of liquid-grown cultures, or coupled to sporulation in plate-grown cultures. Numerous studies have shown that physiological differentiation and secondary metabolism are regulated by many environmental signals, such as nutrient availability, temperature or water stress (Chater, 1993; Hopwood, 1999). To regulate their complex life cycles, and to allow them to adapt to diverse environmental conditions, sensitive signal transduction systems must have evolved in Streptomyces species. Recent studies have shown that protein O-phosphorylation is a widespread phenomenon in streptomycetes (Umeyama et al., 2002; Horinouchi, 2003; Nádvorník et al., 1999). The involvement of eukaryotic-type protein phosphatases (PPs) in Streptomyces metabolism has been demonstrated by the observation that overexpression of the Streptomyces coelicolor ptpA protein phosphatase gene in Streptomyces lividans increases the production of actinorhodin and undecylprodigiosin (Li & Strohl, 1996; Umeyama et al., 1996). Furthermore, the involvement of eukaryotic-type PPs in Streptomyces differentiation was demonstrated when the disruption of the sppA PP gene of S. coelicolor A3(2) impaired the vegetative growth and formation of hyphae and spores (Umeyama et al., 2000).

In our previous study (Shi & Zhang, 2004), we identified 55 eukaryotic-type PPs in each of the S. coelicolor and Streptomyces avermitilis genomes. Considering that most of the previously surveyed prokaryotic genomes contained fewer than ten eukaryotic-type PPs (Shi et al., 1998), the number of PPs found in Streptomyces was unexpectedly large. Analysis of the catalytic domains of the Streptomyces PPs showed that 49 of the PPs in S. coelicolor and 48 of the PPs in S. avermitilis belong to the PPM family. Only 29 of these PPMs have orthologues in both species (Shi & Zhang, 2004). As these streptomycetes have the largest number of PPMs ever identified from any single prokaryotic organism, the existence of PPMs in Streptomyces genomes raises questions of how they originated. Comparison of the S. coelicolor and S. avermitilis genomes revealed that the chromosomes appear to have expanded by internal duplication of DNA, and gene acquisition by horizontal transfer (Bentley et al., 2002). This expansion has presumably allowed these organisms to adapt to a wider range of environmental conditions, and exploit a greater variety of nutrient sources. The preferential incorporation (and subsequent maintenance) of occasionally beneficial sequences outside the conserved ancestral core region of the chromosome has created arms comprising mostly ‘non-essential’ functions (Bentley et al., 2002; Ikeda et al., 2003). Consistent with this hypothesis, we have found that the majority of Streptomyces PPM genes that are unique to each genome are located outside of the core conserved region (Shi & Zhang, 2004). This suggests that recent gene acquisition or duplication events might be responsible, at least to a certain degree, for the presence of such a large number of PPMs in Streptomyces genomes. In this study, we have performed a detailed phylogenetic and domain structural analysis of the Streptomyces PPMs to show that these genes were divided into two major subfamilies after their establishment in the Streptomyces genome. Our analysis indicates that one PPM subfamily (designated subfamily I) has retained the original eukaryotic PPM domain architecture through the course of evolution. In contrast, the other PPM subfamily (designated subfamily II) has been subjected to significant evolutionary modification, including gene duplication and additional sensory domain recruitment. These observations suggest a mechanism by which Streptomyces species may have acquired a diverse population of PPMs to provide the robust signal transduction systems required for survival in the extremely diverse soil environments in which they are found.


   METHODS
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ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
METHODS
RESULTS
DISCUSSION
REFERENCES
 
Search for prokaryotic PPMs.
Most of the prokaryotic PPMs used in this study were obtained from previous studies by ourselves and others (Bork et al., 1996; Shi et al., 1998; Zhang et al., 1998; Wang et al., 2002; Shi & Zhang, 2004), but putative PPMs were also identified from additional microbial genomes (http://www.tigr.org) that had not been thoroughly searched prior to this study. To confirm that any tentatively identified ORFs indeed possessed the catalytic domain of PPMs, their DNA-derived amino acid sequences were used in new searches for conserved domains from the conserved domain databases SMART, Pfam, COG and KOG, with the reverse-position-specific BLAST algorithm provided by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) using an E value <0·01 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Structure/cdd/wrpsb.cgi) (Marchler-Bauer et al., 2003). Applying the criteria described previously (Shi et al., 1998), visual inspection was used to eliminate those domains lacking the minimum complement of conserved sequence features considered necessary to make a functional PPM enzyme.

Sequence alignment and phylogenetic reconstruction.
The protein sequences of a total of 148 PPMs (146 from prokaryotes and 2 from eukaryotes) were retrieved from the NCBI or the TIGR database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov or http://www.tigr.org). The domain structures were identified and analysed using the molecular architecture research tools provided by SMART (http://smart.embl-heidelberg.de) with E value <0·01 (Letunic et al., 2002). The sequence alignments were performed using default parameters of the CLUSTALW program available from the LaserGene software package (DNAStar), and PAUP* 4.0 beta version (Blumenberg, 1988). Confidence levels were determined by analysing 100 bootstrap replicates.


   RESULTS
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ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
METHODS
RESULTS
DISCUSSION
REFERENCES
 
Identification of PPM proteins
Genes encoding serine/threonine-type protein phosphatase (PP) have been found in all three domains of life, Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya (Kennelly, 2001). From 137 complete microbial genomes (16 archaea and 121 bacteria, as of 22 February 2004) listed in the TIGR CMR (Comprehensive Microbial Resource; http://www.tigr.org/tigr-scripts/CMR2/CMRHomePage.spl), a total of 146 protein sequences of putative PPMs were identified, which are distributed in 1 archaeal and 27 bacterial genomes (Bork et al., 1996). Among the genomes searched, the two Streptomyces species we studied previously contained the largest numbers of PPMs (49 PPMs for S. coelicolor, and 48 PPMs for S. avermitilis), followed by Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, Nostoc sp. PCC 7120 (formerly Anabaena sp. PCC 7120) and Bacillus subtilis, which were found to possess five to eight PPMs. In addition, Thermosynechococcus elongatus and Vibrio vulnificus contained two or three PPMs. Of 16 archaeal genomes searched, only one PPM-encoding gene was detected (from Thermoplasma volcanium TVN0703), supporting the earlier observations that most archaeal genomes lack potential PPM genes (Shi et al., 1998; Kennelly, 2002).

Phylogenetic analysis of the catalytic domains of Streptomyces PPMs
To infer the evolutionary histories of Streptomyces PPMs, a phylogenetic analysis was performed using sequences of PPM catalytic domains rather than complete coding sequences of whole proteins, in order to increase the confidence level of sequence alignment. The protein sequences of the 49 identified microbial PPMs, 2 eukaryotic PPMs, and 97 PPMs identified from the S. coelicolor and S. avermitilis genomes, were subjected to domain identification using the molecular architecture research tools provided by SMART. The PPM catalytic domain sequences, which were about 220 aa with all the conserved residues (Fig. 1), were then extracted and used for phylogenetic tree construction. A phylogenetic tree was generated from the aligned catalytic domain sequences, and the confidence of the tree topology was evaluated by bootstrap analysis (Fig. 2).



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Fig. 2. Phylogenetic analysis of the catalytic domains of Streptomyces PPMs. The PPMs of S. coelicolor A3(2) are those with locus accession numbers beginning with ‘SCO’ (annotated by Sanger Sequencing Center), ‘SCP’ (located in plasmid) and ‘NT’ (annotated by TIGR). The PPMs of S. avermitilis are those locus accession numbers beginning with ‘SAV’. The Streptomyces PPMs from subfamily I are marked in bold. The major nodes supported by a bootstrap value of >=50 % are indicated by black spots. The Streptomyces PPMs with secondary functional domain are marked in colour, with red indicating the proteins with the PAS domain, green indicating those with the GAF domain, and blue indicating those with both PAS and GAF domains. The PPM proteins with the REC domain are marked in purple.

 
The conventional view of the universal evolutionary tree is that eukaryotes are rooted in the bacteria (Woese et al., 1990). However, the phylogenies we derived for PPMs clearly deviated from this canonical view, since all of the prokaryotic PPMs were rooted in eukaryotic PPMs. This observation is consistent with an earlier assertion that PPMs may have originated in eukaryotes after their separation from the last common ancestor with bacteria, and later radiated into bacteria through multiple horizontal gene-transfer events (Ponting et al., 1999; Kennelly, 2002). This postulated gene acquisition from eukaryotes would have to have occurred at an early stage of bacterial evolution, since a similar PPM subfamily I catalytic domain architecture was observed to be widespread in diverse bacterial species (Fig. 1).

Another interesting observation that can be made from our phylogenetic analysis is that there was strong bootstrap support for the division of Streptomyces PPMs into two major subfamilies. Subfamily I contained only 6 Streptomyces PPMs (three pairs of homologues from genomes of S. coelicolor and S. avermitilis), and 31 other microbial PPMs from 24 different microbial species. The catalytic domains of the PPM subfamily I all shared the same domain architecture as eukaryotic PPMs, in that they contained 11 conserved motifs, with 8 absolutely conserved residues. The diversification of the PPM subfamily I functional domain between species might be due to the subsequent bacterial speciation and functional specialization. No obvious sign of gene duplication was found for the PPMs in this subfamily. Subfamily II, however, contained 91 Streptomyces PPMs and 18 PPMs from other microbial sources, mainly from cyanobacteria and Bacillus. PPMs from this subfamily showed a relatively high degree of similarity, indicating that some might have arisen by gene duplication events occurring after the original acquisition of the progenitor PPM gene. Comparison of the architecture of catalytic domains showed that they all lacked the 5a and 5b motifs, and showed much less sequence similarity to eukaryotic PPMs. These results suggested that the diversification of architecture in the PPM subfamily II may be due more to functional specialization than to bacterial speciation.

Phylogenetic analysis of additional sensory domains of Streptomyces PPMs
Our previous study reported that 63 % of PPMs from S. coelicolor and 75 % of the PPMs from S. avermitilis possess at least one extra sensory domain, in addition to their PP catalytic domain (Shi & Zhang, 2004). Interestingly, all of the PPMs with additional sensory domains were from subfamily II (Fig. 2), while none of the PPMs from subfamily I contained any additional sensory domain. Two types of sensory domains were most frequently found to be added in these Streptomyces subfamily II PPMs. The first was a PAS domain that binds the chromophore 4-hydroxycinnamyl, and is involved in sensing energy-related environmental factors such as oxygen, redox potential or light; the second is the GAF domain involved in binding cyclic nucleotides (Shi & Zhang, 2004; Taylor & Zhulin, 1999; Taylor et al., 1999; Aravind & Ponting, 1997). Five of the Streptomyces PPMs with an additional sensory domain were found to contain the PAS domain only, 14 contained the GAF domain only, and 29 contained both PAS and GAF domains (Fig. 2). Outside of the Streptomyces PPMs, a PAS domain was also found in the B. subtilis RsbP PPM gene, and GAF domains were found in PPMs from Synechocystis sp., Thermosynechococcus elongatus and Synechococcus sp. WH8102. In addition to the PAS and GAF domains, all four of the PPMs identified in Nostoc sp. PCC 7120 contained REC domains. The REC domain encodes a cheY-homologous receiver domain involved in receiving signals from the sensor partner in bacterial two-component signal transduction systems. The observation that these REC domains were primarily present in subfamily II PPMs in Nostoc suggests that there may be species preferences in recruiting additional sensory domains, possibly due to different environmental selective pressures.

For Streptomyces spp. living in particularly complex and variable soil environments, having multiple sensory domains added to the PPMs may provide a selective advantage by allowing these PPMs to sense multiple environmental signals and/or interact with multiple regulatory proteins simultaneously. The observation that the additional sensory domains in Streptomyces PPMs are found exclusively in subfamily II raises the possibility that the additional sensory domains were recruited into the subfamily II PPM molecules at a late evolutionary stage. To test this hypothesis, we performed a detailed phylogenetic analysis of PAS and GAF domains to see whether they cluster with genes of unrelated lineage. Forty-two PAS domain sequences (mean of 65–100 aa) and 45 sequences of GAF domain (mean of 150–200 aa) were identified from Streptomyces PPMs using the SMART program, and were used to construct phylogenetic trees, along with a few dozen PAS or GAF domains from other bacterial sources. The bootstrap analysis was performed to check the reliability of the cluster assignments (Fig. 3). Analysis of PAS domains showed seven recognizable clusters, each with strong bootstrap support. Although individual exceptions were present, significant clustering based on their putative physiological function, rather than taxonomic relationship, was observed within each PAS cluster (Fig. 3A). This suggests that PAS domains with different functional specialities were either recruited into Streptomyces PPMs directly from other species, or that they were already present in Streptomyces and were later recruited into PPM molecules.



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Fig. 3. Phylogenetic analysis of the additional functional domains from Streptomyces PPMs. (A) Phylogenetic tree of PAS domains. (B) Phylogenetic tree of GAF domains. The domains from S. coelicolor A3(2) PPMs are those with locus accession numbers beginning with ‘SCO’ (annotated by Sanger Sequencing Center), and ‘NT’ (annotated by TIGR). The domains from S. avermitilis PPMs are those locus accession numbers starting with ‘SAV’. Several major branching points supported by a bootstrap value of >=50 % are indicated by black spots. The domains from other microbial sources are indicated by gene names followed by species number. The functional definition for the clusters in the PAS phylogenetic tree was according to Taylor & Zhulin (1999). The lack of information on the physiological function of GAF domains hindered the function definition of clusters.

 
In the phylogenetic tree constructed using GAF domains, most of the known GAF domains from other microbial sources clustered in one clade, in which they also tended to be grouped based on their putative functions rather than taxonomic relationship; for example, GAF domains from CyaB of Nostoc sp. and Anabaena sp. were clustered together, while distanced from CyaC of same species in the phylogenetic tree (cluster B in Fig. 3B) (Aravind & Ponting, 1997). The majority of the GAF domains from Streptomyces PPMs were grouped together in another clade (cluster A in Fig. 3B), in which they shared the same root, suggesting that they might originate from the same ancestor, and then be subjected to lateral functional specialization. It is also notable that the GAF domains from non-PPM Streptomyces proteins were clustered differently from those from Streptomyces PPMs (Fig. 3B), suggesting they had different courses of origination and evolution.

Further evidence for lateral recruitment of additional sensory domains was provided by the phylogenetic trees of catalytic domains and PAS or GAF domains. An obvious incongruity is observed when comparing these trees, in that two PPMs with homologous catalytic domains do not necessarily possess the same additional sensory domains. For example, the SAV4009 PPM (from S. avermitilis) contains both PAS and GAF domains, while its homologous PPM SCO4201 in S. coelicolor has no additional sensory domain, suggesting that the additional domain recruitment occurred after the Streptomyces speciation. These results suggest that both PAS and GAF domain recruitment in Streptomyces PPMs may not have originated from a simple scheme of vertical transmission occurring concurrently with speciation, but may be the result of domain recruitment in later evolutionary stages. This domain recruitment may have occurred as a result of adaptive function specialization occurring after duplication of the catalytic domain of another PPM gene.


   DISCUSSION
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ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
METHODS
RESULTS
DISCUSSION
REFERENCES
 
Streptomycetes are among the most numerous and ubiquitous soil bacteria. Unusually for bacteria, streptomycetes exhibit complex multicellular development, and they have the ability to synthesize numerous natural compounds with complex chemical structures (Bentley et al., 2002). It is thus expected that Streptomyces spp. must have very delicate and robust signal transduction mechanisms (Chater, 1993). However, even considering the complexity of their life style, it is still a surprise to find that two Streptomyces genomes contain five to ten times more PPM-encoding genes than any of the other sequenced bacterial genomes. This is particularly striking when contrasted with the number of PPs from three other identified PP superfamilies (the phosphoprotein phosphatase family, the conventional protein tyrosine phosphatase family, and the low-molecular-mass protein tyrosine phosphatase family), which occur at frequencies similar to those found in other bacterial genomes. In this study, a detailed phylogenetic analysis of Streptomyces PPMs was undertaken to explore their origin and evolutionary history.

PPMs are functionally diverse enzymes, and they have been found to be involved in regulation of cellular responses to environmental stress in mammalian and yeast cells, and to the growth regulator abscisic acid in plant cells. The functions of the microbial PPMs that have been characterized include regulation of spore formation, stress response, cell density during stationary phase, carbon and nitrogen assimilation, vegetative growth, development of fruiting bodies and cell segregation (Beuf et al., 1994; Duncan et al., 1995; Gaidenko et al., 2002; Irmler & Forchhammer, 2001; Rajagopal et al., 2003; Shi et al., 1999; Treuner-Lange et al., 2001; Yang et al., 1996). It is notable that most bacterial species containing relatively large numbers of PPM-encoding genes, such as Anabaena sp. PCC 7120, Bacillus spp. and Streptomyces spp., are able to undergo complex morphological differentiation, similar to that seen in multicellular eukaryotes. Although it still needs proof, preliminary analysis points to a possible link between the complexity of a micro-organism's life style, and the distribution of PPM-encoding genes in its genome. In the past several years, extensive knowledge has been accumulating on the cellular roles of PAS-domain-based signalling systems and, on the basis of this knowledge, it is often possible to propose a role for a particular PAS domain based on known functions in similar signalling systems (Taylor & Zhulin, 1999). Our observation that most of the PAS domains from Streptomyces PPMs are clustered with PAS domains of known function from other species might thus provide some guidance for further investigations of the physiological functions of Streptomyces PPMs.

Although the physiological function of most Streptomyces PPMs is still unknown, studies in B. subtilis suggest that sigma factors might be one of the predominant targets regulated by PPM-mediated signal transduction pathways (Mittenhuber, 2002). In support of this, a B. subtilis PPM containing a PAS domain was recently found to be necessary for conveying signals of energy stress to the sigma B transcription factor in this organism (Vijay et al., 2000). A possible functional link between PPMs and sigma factors is also suggested by the correlation between the number of PPMs and sigma factors in each genome, with most PPM-rich micro-organisms also containing a large number of sigma factors. For example, B. subtilis contains 18 sigma factors, Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 contains 7, and Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 contains 9 (Gruber & Gross, 2003). A recent survey has identified an astonishing 63 sigma-factor-encoding genes from the S. coelicolor genome, and phylogenetic analysis suggested that gene duplications might be responsible for the origin of some of these sigma factors. The gene duplication in group 4, which contains 49 out of the total of 63 sigma factors, was particularly evident. Among this group are the sigma factors {sigma}BldN and {sigma}E involved in regulation of aerial hyphae formation and the integrity of the cell envelope (Gruber & Gross, 2003). Although still requiring biochemical and genetic verification, the correlation between the numbers of PPMs and sigma factors, and their apparently similar evolutionary histories, strongly suggests that the PPMs in Streptomyces, especially those from the second subfamily, are most likely to be involved in regulating the activities of at least some sigma factors.

Like the PPMs previously characterized from other bacteria (Shi, 2004), Streptomyces PPMs were clearly divided into two major subfamilies. However, the unbalanced distribution of these Streptomyces PPMs into the two subfamilies is unusual. The first subfamily contains only six Streptomyces PPMs, each with a conserved catalytic domain architecture similar that of eukaryotic PPMs, and showing no sign of either gene duplication or additional domain recruitment. One possible explanation could be that these six PPMs are involved in the regulation of critical ‘house-keeping’ functions, and their regulatory functions were specialized at a very early stage of evolution. If this were the case, any gene duplication and mutation in this subfamily would be likely to have an adverse effect on the fitness of the cell. In contrast, the PPM genes in the second subfamily might be involved in the regulation of less essential metabolic activities, and would therefore be flexible enough to serve as a basis for gene duplication and domain recruitment to generate novel sensory and regulatory activities to deal with highly variable environments. Several recent studies comparing multiple complete genomes from phylogenetically distant species have concluded that the number of universally conserved gene families is very small, and that multiple events of horizontal gene transfer and domain recruitment within or across species constitute a major evolutionary path to the generation of novel genes (Copley et al., 2003; Koonin & Galperin, 1997). This is especially applicable in the case of the non-essential genes that tend to be recruited to deal with the survival needs in new niches. The phenomenon of horizontal gene transfer between streptomycetes and other bacteria and eukaryotes has been suggested to be responsible for genomic changes ranging from acquisition of individual genes, to entire antibiotic gene clusters (Egan et al., 2001; Coque et al., 1991). Such gene transfers have been demonstrated to occur at high frequencies, even in the soil environment (Wellington et al., 1992). It is especially noteworthy that the large-scale domain recruitment we observed in Streptomyces PPMs represents regulatory rather than structural genes, since it has been proposed that regulatory functions are not routinely acquired by means of heterogeneous acquisition (Jain et al., 1999; Ma & Zeng, 2004). Our study provides an insight into how Streptomyces spp. may have expanded their PPM-based signal transduction networks to enable them to respond to a greater range of environmental changes.


   ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
 
We would like to thank Dr David E. Culley for his critical reading of this manuscript. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is operated by Battelle Memorial Institute for the US Department of Energy through contract DE-AC06-76RLO 1830.


   REFERENCES
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ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION
METHODS
RESULTS
DISCUSSION
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Received 9 July 2004; revised 29 August 2004; accepted 3 September 2004.



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