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Bioinformatics Advance Access published online on December 6, 2005
Bioinformatics, doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/bti811
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© The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Received September 25, 2005
Revised November 23, 2005
Accepted December 1, 2005

Discovery note

Lateral gene transfer of a dermonecrotic toxin between spiders and bacteria

Matthew H. J. Cordes 1 * and Greta J. Binford 2

1 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
2 Department of Biology, Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR 97219, USA

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Matthew H. J. Cordes, E-mail: cordes{at}email.arizona.edu


  Abstract

Motivation: Spiders in the genus Loxosceles, including the notoriously toxic brown recluse, cause severe necrotic skin lesions due to the presence of a venom enzyme called sphingomyelinase D (SMaseD). This enzyme activity is unknown elsewhere in the animal kingdom but is shared with strains of pathogenic Corynebacteria that cause various illnesses in farm animals. The presence of the same toxic activity only in distantly related organisms poses an interesting and medically important question in molecular evolution.

Results: We use superpositions of recently determined structures and sequence comparisons to infer that both bacterial and spider SMaseDs originated from a common, broadly conserved domain family, the glycerophosphoryl diester phosphodiesterases. We also identify a unique sequence/structure motif present in both SMaseDs but not in the ancestral family, supporting SMaseD origin through a single divergence event in either bacteria or spiders, followed by lateral gene transfer from one lineage to the other.


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This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Mol Biol EvolHome page
G. J. Binford, M. R. Bodner, M. H.J. Cordes, K. L. Baldwin, M. R. Rynerson, S. N. Burns, and P. A. Zobel-Thropp
Molecular Evolution, Functional Variation, and Proposed Nomenclature of the Gene Family That Includes Sphingomyelinase D in Sicariid Spider Venoms
Mol. Biol. Evol., March 1, 2009; 26(3): 547 - 566.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


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