The enzymes of the CHS-superfamily are responsible for biosynthesis of a wide range of natural products in plants. They are important for flower pigmentation, protection against UV light and defense against phytopathogens. Many plants were found to contain multiple copies of CHS genes. This review summarizes the recent progress in the studies of the CHS-superfamily, focusing on the duplication and divergent evolution of the CHS and CHS-like genes. Comparative analyses of gene structure, ex- pression patterns and catalytic properties revealed extensive differentiation in both regulation and func- tion among duplicate CHS genes. It is also proposed that the CHS-like enzymes in the CHS-superfamily evolved from CHS at different times in various or- ganisms. The CHS-superfamily thus offers a valuable model to study the rates and patterns of sequence divergence between duplicate genes.
The COP9 signalosome and the regulatory lid of the 26S proteasome are both eight-subunit protein complexes which are present in most eukaryotes. There is a one-to-one relationship between the corresponding subunits of the two protein complexes in terms of their size and amino acid sequences. Eight groups of subunits from the COP9 signalosome and the proteasome lid complex of different organisms are collected from all the databases at the NCBI website. The corresponding subunits of COP9 signalosome and proteasome lid complex share at least 12% amino acid identity and some conserved regions, and the conserved sites spread evenly over the entire length of the subunits, suggesting that the two complexes have a common evolutionary ancestor. Phylogenetic analyses based on the amino acid sequences of the corresponding subunits of two protein complexes indicate that every tree consists of two clades. The subunits from one of the two protein complexes of different organisms are grouped into one of the two clades respectively. The sequences of single-cell organisms are always the basal groups to that of multi-cell animal and plant species. These results imply that the duplication/divergence events of COP9 signalosome and regulatory lid of the proteasome genes have occurred before the divergence of single-cell and multi-cell eukaryotes, and the genes of the two complexes are independently evolved. The analyses of dN/dS correlation show significant Pearson's correlations between 21 and 15 pairs of subunit-encoding sequences within the COP9 signalosome and the proteasome lid complex respectively, suggesting that those subunits pairs might have related functions and interacted with one another, and resulted in co-evolution.
The molecular composition and evolution of the chalcone synthase (CHS) gene family from five species in Camellia (Theaceae) are explored in this study. Sixteen CHS exon 2 from four Camellia species were amplified from total DNA by PCR method. Three sequences of the fifth species in Camellia and two sequences of Glycine max as the designated outgroups were obtained from GenBank. Our results indicated that CHS gene family in Camellia was differentiated to three subfamilies (A, B, C) during the evolutionary history with six groups (A1, A2, A3, BI, B2, C). Among them, only group A2 was possessed by all five species in this study. However, the other five groups were detected only in some species of the plants studied. All members of CHS gene family in this study had high sequence similarity, more than 90% among the members in the same subfamily and more than 78% among different subfamilies at nucleotide level., According to the estimated components of amino acids, the function of CHS genes in Camellia had been diverged. The nucleotide substitutions of the different groups were not identical. Based on phylogenetic analyse inferred from sequences of CHS genes and their deduced amino acid sequences, we concluded that the CHS genes with new function in this genus were evolved either by mutations on several important sites or by accumulation of the mutations after the gene duplication. A further analysis showed that the diversification of CHS genes in Camellia still occurred recently, and the evolutionary models were different to some extant among different species. So we assumed that the different evolutionary models resulted from the impacts of variable environmental elements after the events of speciation.
