title: Diversification of ftsZ during early land plant evolution.
abstract: The plastid division proteins FtsZ are encoded by a small nuclear gene family in land plants. Although it has been shown for some of the gene products that they are imported into plastids and function in plastid division, the evolution and function of this gene family and their products remain to be unraveled. Here we present two new ftsZ genes from the moss Physcomitrella patens and compare the genomic structure of members of the two plant ftsZ gene families. Comparison of sequence features and phylogenetic analyses confirm the presence of two clusters of paralogues in land plants and demonstrate that these genes were duplicated before the divergence of mosses, ferns and seed plants.
authors.affiliation: University of Freiburg, Plant Biotechnology, Sonnenstr. 5, D-79104 Freiburg, Germany, stefan.rensing@biologie.uni-freiburg.de
authors.forename: Stefan A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Rensing
authors.forename: Justine
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kiessling
authors.forename: Ralf
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Reski
authors.forename: Eva L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Decker
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins; D001483:Base Sequence; D044002:Bryophyta / Q000235:genetics*; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D030561:Databases, Nucleic Acid; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D040461:Gene Components; D020440:Gene Duplication; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008957:Models, Genetic; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D005810:Multigene Family / Q000235:genetics; D010802:Phylogeny; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D018087:Plastids / Q000378:metabolism; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
chemical_list: D029681:Arabidopsis Proteins; C095113:FTSZ protein, Arabidopsis; D010940:Plant Proteins