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Group 1 LEA proteins, an ancestral plant protein group, are also present in other eukaryotes, and in the archeae and bacteria domains

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Abstract

Water is an essential element for living organisms, such that various responses have evolved to withstand water deficit in all living species. The study of these responses in plants has had particular relevance given the negative impact of water scarcity on agriculture. Among the molecules highly associated with plant responses to water limitation are the so-called late embryogenesis abundant (LEA) proteins. These proteins are ubiquitous in the plant kingdom and accumulate during the late phase of embryogenesis and in vegetative tissues in response to water deficit. To know about the evolution of these proteins, we have studied the distribution of group 1 LEA proteins, a set that has also been found beyond the plant kingdom, in Bacillus subtilis and Artemia franciscana. Here, we report the presence of group 1 LEA proteins in green algae (Chlorophyita and Streptophyta), suggesting that these group of proteins emerged before plant land colonization. By sequence analysis of public genomic databases, we also show that 34 prokaryote genomes encode group 1 LEA-like proteins; two of them belong to Archaea domain and 32 to bacterial phyla. Most of these microbes live in soil-associated habitats suggesting horizontal transfer from plants to bacteria; however, our phylogenetic analysis points to convergent evolution. Furthermore, we present data showing that bacterial group 1 LEA proteins are able to prevent enzyme inactivation upon freeze–thaw treatments in vitro, suggesting that they have analogous functions to plant LEA proteins. Overall, data in this work indicate that LEA1 proteins’ properties might be relevant to cope with water deficit in different organisms.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Jaqueline Mazari for excellent technical assistance. We acknowledge to Paul Gaytán and Santiago Becerra from Oligonucleotide Synthesis and DNA Sequencing Facilities of the Instituto de Biotecnología-UNAM for providing us with the oligonucleotides and DNA sequences used in this work. This work was partially supported by CONACyT-Mexico to AAC (50485 and 132258). C.C.-V. was supported by a PhD fellowship from CONACyT.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Biología Molecular de Plantas, Instituto de Biotecnología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Av. Universidad 2001 Col. Chamilpa, 62210, Cuernavaca, MOR, Mexico

    F. Campos, C. Cuevas-Velazquez, J. L. Reyes & A. A. Covarrubias

  2. Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Plantas, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Ingeniero Fausto Elio s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain

    M. A. Fares

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  1. F. Campos
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  2. C. Cuevas-Velazquez
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  3. M. A. Fares
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  4. J. L. Reyes
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  5. A. A. Covarrubias
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Correspondence to F. Campos.

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Communicated by S. Hohmann.

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438_2013_768_MOESM1_ESM.doc

Supplemental material Fig. 1S. Multiple-sequence alignment of plant and non-plant group LEA1 proteins. Multiple-sequence alignment of all the LEA1 sequences used in this work (Table 1 and Table 2) (DOC 49 kb)

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Campos, F., Cuevas-Velazquez, C., Fares, M.A. et al. Group 1 LEA proteins, an ancestral plant protein group, are also present in other eukaryotes, and in the archeae and bacteria domains. Mol Genet Genomics 288, 503–517 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-013-0768-2

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