title: Early evolution of the eukaryotic Ca2+ signaling machinery: conservation of the CatSper channel complex.
abstract: Calcium signaling is one of the most extensively employed signal transduction mechanisms in life. As life evolved into increasingly complex organisms, Ca(2+) acquired more extensive and varied functions. Here, we compare genes encoding proteins that govern Ca(2+) entry and exit across cells or organelles within organisms of early eukaryotic evolution into fungi, plants, and animals. Recent phylogenomics analyses reveal a complex Ca(2+) signaling machinery in the apusozoan protist Thecamonas trahens, a putative unicellular progenitor of Opisthokonta. We compare T. trahens Ca(2+) signaling to that in a marine bikont protist, Aurantiochytrium limacinum, and demonstrate the conservation of key Ca(2+) signaling molecules in the basally diverging alga Cyanophora paradoxa. Particularly, our findings reveal the conservation of the CatSper channel complex in Au. limacinum and C. paradoxa, suggesting that the CatSper complex likely originated from an ancestral Ca(2+) signaling machinery at the root of early eukaryotic evolution prior to the unikont/bikont split.
authors: Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Nutrition, Department of Medicine, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ caixinj@gmail.com dclapham@enders.tch.harvard.edu.
authors: Xinjiang
authors: X
authors: Cai
authors: Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Nutrition, Department of Medicine, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ.
authors: Xiangbing
authors: X
authors: Wang
authors: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Cardiology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA caixinj@gmail.com dclapham@enders.tch.harvard.edu.
authors: David E
authors: DE
authors: Clapham
mesh_terms: D015220:Calcium Channels / Q000235:genetics*; D020013:Calcium Signaling; D044424:Cyanophora / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D056890:Eukaryota / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D010802:Phylogeny
chemical_list: D015220:Calcium Channels
keywords: CatSper; animals; calcium channels; calcium signaling; eukaryotes; evolution