Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2010

Publication Source

BMC Evolutionary Biology

Abstract

Background: The completion of 19 insect genome sequencing projects spanning six insect orders provides the opportunity to investigate the evolution of important gene families, here tubulins. Tubulins are a family of eukaryotic structural genes that form microtubules, fundamental components of the cytoskeleton that mediate cell division, shape, motility, and intracellular trafficking. Previous in vivo studies in Drosophila find a stringent relationship between tubulin structure and function; small, biochemically similar changes in the major alpha 1 or testis-specific beta 2 tubulin protein render each unable to generate a motile spermtail axoneme. This has evolutionary implications, not a single non-synonymous substitution is found in beta 2 among 17 species of Drosophila and Hirtodrosophila flies spanning 60 Myr of evolution. This raises an important question, How do tubulins evolve while maintaining their function? To answer, we use molecular evolutionary analyses to characterize the evolution of insect tubulins.

ISBN/ISSN

1471-2148

Document Version

Published Version

Publisher

BioMed Central

Volume

10

Peer Reviewed

yes

Keywords

Biomed Central Ltd, Article, Beta-Tubulin, Alpha-Tubulin, Cell Motility, Sperm Tail, In-Vivo, Drosophila, Axoneme, Intron, Microtubule, Sequences


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