Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2013 Mar;76(3):129-45.
doi: 10.1007/s00239-013-9545-4. Epub 2013 Feb 10.

Evolutionary history of eukaryotic α-glucosidases from the α-amylase family

Marek Gabriško  1
Affiliations

Evolutionary history of eukaryotic α-glucosidases from the α-amylase family

Marek Gabriško. J Mol Evol. 2013 Mar.

Abstract

Although some α-glucosidases from the α-amylase family (glycoside hydrolase family GH13) have been studied extensively, their exact number, organization on the chromosome, and orthology/paralogy relationship were unknown. This was true even for important disease vectors where gut α-glucosidase is known to be receptor for the Bin toxin used to control the population of some mosquito species. In some cases orthologs from related species were studied intensively, while potentially important paralogs were omitted. We have, therefore, used a bioinformatics approach to identify all family GH13 α-glucosidases from the selected species from Metazoa (including three mosquito species: Aedes aegypti, Anopheles gambiae, and Culex quinquefasciatus) as well as from Fungi in an effort to characterize their arrangement on the chromosome and evolutionary relationships among orthologs and among paralogs. We also searched for pseudogenes and genes coding for enzymatically inactive proteins with a possible new function. We have found GH13 α-glucosidases mostly in Arthropoda and Fungi where they form gene families, as a result of multiple lineage-specific gene duplications. In mosquito species we have identified 14 α-glucosidase (Aglu) genes of which only five have been biochemically characterized so far, two are putative pseudogenes and the rest remains uncharacterized. We also revealed quite a complex evolutionary history of the eukaryotic α-glucosidases probably involving multiple losses of genes or horizontal gene transfer from bacteria.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Insect Biochem Mol Biol. 2010 Aug;40(8):604-10 - PubMed
    1. Insect Biochem Mol Biol. 1999 Aug;29(8):711-21 - PubMed
    1. Genome Biol. 2005;6(4):R39 - PubMed
    1. Trends Biochem Sci. 1998 Oct;23(10):403-5 - PubMed
    1. J Biochem. 1984 Mar;95(3):697-702 - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources