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Evolution of Rubisco activase gene in plants

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Abstract

Key message

Rubisco activase of plants evolved in a stepwise manner without losing its function to adapt to the major evolutionary events including endosymbiosis and land colonization.

Abstract

Rubisco activase is an essential enzyme for photosynthesis, which removes inhibitory sugar phosphates from the active sites of Rubisco, a process necessary for Rubisco activation and carbon fixation. The gene probably evolved in cyanobacteria as different species differ for its presence. However, the gene is present in all other plant species. At least a single gene copy was maintained throughout plant evolution; but various genome and gene duplication events, which occurred during plant evolution, increased its copy number in some species. The exons and exon–intron junctions of present day higher plant’s Rca, which is conserved in most species seem to have evolved in charophytes. A unique tandem duplication of Rca gene occurred in a common grass ancestor, and the two genes evolved differently for gene structure, sequence, and expression pattern. At the protein level, starting with a primitive form in cyanobacteria, RCA of chlorophytes evolved by integrating chloroplast transit peptide (cTP), and N-terminal domains to the ATPase, Rubisco recognition and C-terminal domains. The redox regulated C-terminal extension (CTE) and the associated alternate splicing mechanism, which splices the RCA-α and RCA-β isoforms were probably gained from another gene in charophytes, conserved in most species except the members of Solanaceae family.

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Abbreviations

RCA:

Rubisco activase

cTP:

Chloroplast transit peptide

CTE:

C-terminal extension

AAA+:

ATPases associated with diverse cellular activities

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch (project number WNP00449) and United States Agency for International Development Feed the Future Innovation Lab-Climate Resilient Wheat (Grant Number AID-OAA-A-13-00008).

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  1. Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, 99164, USA

    Ragupathi Nagarajan & Kulvinder S. Gill

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  1. Ragupathi Nagarajan
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  2. Kulvinder S. Gill
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Conceived and designed the experiments: RN KSG. Performed the experiments: RN. Analyzed the data: RN. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: KSG. Wrote the paper: RN KSG.

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Correspondence to Kulvinder S. Gill.

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Nagarajan, R., Gill, K.S. Evolution of Rubisco activase gene in plants. Plant Mol Biol 96, 69–87 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-017-0680-y

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