On the origin of family 1 plant glycosyltransferases

• Published in: Phytochemistry (Oxford) Vol. 62; no. 3; pp. 399 - 413
• Main Authors: Paquette, Suzanne, Møller, Birger Lindberg, Bak, Søren
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier Ltd 01.02.2003; Elsevier
• Subjects: Amino Acid Sequence; Analytical, structural and metabolic biochemistry; Animals; Arabidopsis - enzymology; Arabidopsis - genetics; Arabidopsis thaliana; Base Sequence; Biological and medical sciences; Brassicaceae; Chromosome Mapping; Cytochrome P-450 Enzyme System - genetics; Enzymes; Enzymes and enzyme inhibitors; Evolution, Molecular; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Fungal Proteins - genetics; Gene organization analysis; Genome, Plant; Glycosyltransferases - genetics; Metabolism; Molecular evolution; Molecular Sequence Data; Multigene Family; Phylogenetic analysis; Phylogeny; Plant physiology and development; Plant Proteins - genetics; Sequence Alignment - statistics & numerical data; Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; Thale cress; Transferases; UDPG-glycosyltransferases; UGT; Viral Proteins - genetics; Phylogenetic analysis; Arabidopsis thaliana; Molecular evolution; Gene organization analysis; UGT; UDPG-glycosyltransferases; Thale cress; Brassicaceae; Genetic mapping; Enzyme; Transferases; Glycosyltransferases; Homology; Phylogeny; Cruciferae; Dicotyledones; Angiospermae; Multigene family; Spermatophyta; Aminoacid sequence
• ISSN: 0031-9422; 1873-3700
• DOI: 10.1016/S0031-9422(02)00558-7

The phylogeny of highly divergent multigene families is often difficult to validate but can be substantiated by inclusion of data outside of the phylogeny, such as signature motifs, intron splice site conservation, unique substitutions of conserved residues, similar gene functions, and out groups. The Family 1 Glycosyltransferases (UGTs) comprises such a highly divergent, polyphyletic multigene family. Phylogenetic comparisons of UGTs from plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, and viruses reveal that plant UGTs represent three distinct clades. The majority of the plant sequences appears to be monophyletic and have diverged after the bifurcation of the animal/fungi/plant kingdoms. The two minor clades contain the sterol and lipid glycosyltransferases and each show more homology to non-plant sequences. The lipid glycosyltransferase clade is homologous to bacterial lipid glycosyltransferases and reflects the bacterial origin of chloroplasts. The fully sequenced Arabidopsis thaliana genome contains 120 UGTs including 8 apparent pseudogenes. The phylogeny of plant glycosyltransferases is substantiated with complete phylogenetic analysis of the A. thaliana UGT multigene family, including intron-exon organization and chromosomal localization. The paper discusses phylogenetic relationships of the UGT multigene family of plants, animals, fungi and viruses, supplemented with the complete intron-exon organization and phylogenetic relationship of the 120 Arabidopsis thaliana UGTs.