Molecular evolution and role of aquaporins in the water-to-land transitions of amphibious fishes
Aquaporins (AQPs) or major intrinsic proteins (MIPs) form an ancient family of transporters for water and small solute across biological membranes. They constitute a highly diverse protein superfamily, and their evolutionary history and functions have been relatively well studied in vertebrates and...
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| Formato: | tesis doctoral |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2023 |
| País: | España |
| Recursos: | Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) |
| Repositorio: | Docta Complutense |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/87846 |
| Acesso em linha: | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/87846 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palavra-chave: | 597.6(043.2) Anfibios Zoología 2401 Biología Animal (Zoología) |
| Resumo: | Aquaporins (AQPs) or major intrinsic proteins (MIPs) form an ancient family of transporters for water and small solute across biological membranes. They constitute a highly diverse protein superfamily, and their evolutionary history and functions have been relatively well studied in vertebrates and plants. For instance, in vertebrates four well defined clusters are described: AQP1-like (water-selective classical aquaporins), AQP8-like (ammonia channels), AQP3-like (aquaglyceroporins), and AQP11-like (unorthodox or super aquaporins). In land vertebrates (Tetrapoda), an exclusive clade of MIPs/AQPs—which is clustered within the classical aquaporins and includes three different orthologues—appears to have been important for their process of colonisation of terrestrial environments. MIPs are broadly present across the eukaryotic tree of life suggesting both a more complex evolutionary history and a larger set of functions than previously thought. Here, we studied the diversity of MIP proteins in the entire eukaryotic lineage by setting a general phylogenetic context for understanding their evolution. Besides, considering the importance of aquaporins in the water-to-land transition of sarcopterygian vertebrates (emergence of tetrapods), we studied the molecular evolution of these proteins in several amphibious fishes of the actinopterygian branch in order to investigate possible new duplication events or adaptive modifications at the sequence level that could be related with their acquisition of an amphibious lifestyle. Finally, we provide a robust bioinformatic workflow and pipeline for gene isolation from large-scale genomic data and phylogenetic analyses that enabled the achievement of the molecular evolution goals... |
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