Increases in the number of SNARE genes
parallels the rise of multicellularity
among the green plants
Anton Sanderfoot
The green plant lineage is the second major multicellular expansion
among the
eukaryotes, arising from unicellular ancestors to produce the
incredible diversity of
morphologies and habitats observed today. In the unicellular ancestors,
secretion of material
through the endomembrane system was the major mechanism for interacting
and shaping the
external environment. In a multicellular organism, the external
environment can be made of
other cells, some of which may have vastly different developmental
fates, or be part of
different tissues or organs. In this context, a given cell must find
ways to organize its secretory
pathway at a level beyond that of the unicellular ancestor. Recently,
sequence information from
many green plants have become available, allowing an examination of the
genomes for the
machinery involved in the secretory pathway. In this work, the SNARE
proteins of several
green plants have been identified. While little increase in gene number
was seen in the
SNAREs of the early secretory system, many new SNARE genes and gene
families have
appeared in the multicellular green plants with respect to the
unicellular plants, suggesting that
this increase in the number of SNARE genes may have some relation to
the rise of
multicellularity in green plants.
Plant Physiol., May 2007, Vol. 144, No. 1
(http://www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/rapidpdf/pp.106.092973v1)
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Cindy Martens
VIB DEPARTMENT OF PLANT SYSTEMS BIOLOGY, UGent
Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Genomics
Technologiepark 927
B-9052 Gent
Belgium
Tel: +32 (0)9 331 38 22
Fax: +32 (0)9 331 38 09
E-mail: cindy.martens@psb.ugent.be
Website: http://www.psb.ugent.be/bioinformatics
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