Abstract
The Groucho/Tle family of corepressor proteins has important roles in development and in adult tissue in both Protostomes and Deuterostomes. In Drosophila, a single member of this family has been identified. Unlike in Protostomes, most Deutrostomes contain more than two full-length Tle genes. In this study, I analyse the genomic organization and phylogenetic relationship between the long and short forms of the Groucho/Tle family members in Chordata. The genomic location and sequence similarities suggest that Aes/Grg5 and Tle6/Grg6 arose from duplication of the Tle2 gene; each evolved independently and acquired new functions as negative regulators of the other Tle proteins. Based on these data, a model for Groucho/Tle gene evolution is proposed.
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Acknowledgments
I am greatly indebted to my supervisor, Dr. Thomas Czerny for the stimulating discussions I had with him during my Ph.D. and improving this work. I thank Drs. Narges Aghaallaei, Claus Vogl and Jean-Michel Gibert for the helpful comments and critical reading on the manuscript.
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Supplementary Fig. S1
Alignment of Ciona and human Groucho genes. The carboxy-terminal amino acid sequences of human Tle1–4 genes (from amino acid 446 to 770 in hTle1) were aligned with Ciona Groucho genes. Dots indicate amino acids identical to the Tle1 sequence. Dashes indicate alignment gaps. The four WD dipeptides are boxed. Ci Ciona intestinalis; Cs Ciona savignyi; h Homo sapiens (GIF 46 kb)
Supplementary Fig. S2
Groucho is duplicated in Ciona intestinalis. Schematic view of the C. intestinalis chromosome 4q region. It contains the two Groucho genes. Ensembl accession numbers for the Ciona genes are given below (ENSCINT000000 has to be added before each number); those for GrouchoA and GrouchoB see in the “Materials and methods”. Map positions in Mb are given above the boxes (GIF 4 kb)
Supplementary Fig. S3
Chromosomal organization of Tle homologs in vertebrates. a Schematic view of chromosomal regions containing the Tle1 and Tle4 locus in human, mouse, dog, Xenopus and Tetraodon. In human, dog, Tetraodon and Xenopus, both Tle1 and Tle4 are tandemly localized on chromosomes 9, 1, 12 and scaffold 272, respectively. In mouse, Tle1 and Tle4 are localized on the separate chromosomes 4 and 19, which both have a synteny with human chromosome 9. b Schematic view of the Tle2 loci. Conserved synteny was identified between the human and mouse Aes, Tle2 and Tle6 regions on chromosomes 19 and 10, respectively. In Tetraodon, two Tle2 genes (Tle2a and Tle2b) were identified on chromosome 1, which has syntenic regions with human chromosome 19. The Tetraodon Aes is localized on chromosome 10. Each bar indicates a gene. Horizontal lines indicate the orthologs of each gene between the species. Map positions in Mb (except Kb for Xenopus) are given to the right of the bars (GIF 35 kb)
Supplementary Fig. S4
Exon structures of Q and GP domains. Aes/Grg5 is composed only of Q- and GP domains. The exon structures encoding Q and GP domains are conserved between Aes/Grg5 and full-length genes. Exons and Introns are represented by boxes and lines, respectively. The number in each box refers to the length of an exon in base pairs (bp). For comparison, only the first seven exons from full-length genes are shown here. h human; m mouse (GIF 20 kb)
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Bajoghli, B. Evolution of the Groucho/Tle gene family: gene organization and duplication events. Dev Genes Evol 217, 613–618 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-007-0167-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-007-0167-y