Phylogenetic analysis of the vertebrate galectin family

Galectins form a family of structurally related carbohydrate binding proteins (lectins) that have been identified in a large variety of metazoan phyla. They are involved in many biological processes such as morphogenesis, control of cell death, immunological response, and cancer. To elucidate the ev...

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Published inMolecular biology and evolution Vol. 21; no. 7; pp. 1177 - 1187
Main Authors Houzelstein, Denis, Gonçalves, Isabelle R, Fadden, Andrew J, Sidhu, Sukhvinder S, Cooper, Douglas N W, Drickamer, Kurt, Leffler, Hakon, Poirier, Françoise
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Oxford University Press (OUP) 01.07.2004
Subjects
Animals
Basic Medicine
chordate
Chromosomes - genetics
evolution
Evolution, Molecular
galectin
Galectins - classification
Galectins - genetics
Humans
Immunologi inom det medicinska området
Immunology in the medical area
Lgals
Life Sciences
Medical and Health Sciences
Medicin och hälsovetenskap
Medicinska och farmaceutiska grundvetenskaper
Microbiology in the medical area
Mikrobiologi inom det medicinska området
Phylogeny
vertebrate
Vertebrates - genetics
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Summary:Galectins form a family of structurally related carbohydrate binding proteins (lectins) that have been identified in a large variety of metazoan phyla. They are involved in many biological processes such as morphogenesis, control of cell death, immunological response, and cancer. To elucidate the evolutionary history of galectins and galectin-like proteins in chordates, we have exploited three independent lines of evidence: (i) location of galectin encoding genes (LGALS) in the human genome; (ii) exon-intron organization of galectin encoding genes; and (iii) sequence comparison of carbohydrate recognition domains (CRDs) of chordate galectins. Our results suggest that a duplication of a mono-CRD galectin gene gave rise to an original bi-CRD galectin gene, before or early in chordate evolution. The N-terminal and C-terminal CRDs of this original galectin subsequently diverged into two different subtypes, defined by exon-intron structure (F4-CRD and F3-CRD). We show that all vertebrate mono-CRD galectins known to date belong to either the F3- or F4- subtype. A sequence of duplication and divergence events of the different galectins in chordates is proposed.
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ISSN:0737-4038
1537-1719
DOI:10.1093/molbev/msh082