Candidate attenuators were identified that regulate operons responsible for biosynthesis of branched amino acids, histidine, threonine, tryptophan, and phenylalanine in gamma- and alpha-proteobacteria, and in some cases in low-GC Gram-positive bacteria, Thermotogales and Bacteroidetes/Chlorobi. This allowed us not only to describe the evolutionary dynamics of regulation by attenuation of transcription, but also to annotate a number of hypothetical genes. In particular, orthologs of ygeA of Escherichia coli were assigned the branched chain amino acid racemase function. Three new families of histidine transporters were predicted, orthologs of yuiF and yvsH of Bacillus subtilis, and lysQ of Lactococcus lactis. In Pasteurellales, the single bifunctional aspartate kinase/homoserine dehydrogenase gene thrA was predicted to be regulated not only by threonine and isoleucine, as in E. coli, but also by methionine. In alpha-proteobacteria, the single acetolactate synthase operon ilvIH was predicted to be regulated by branched amino acids-dependent attenuators. Histidine biosynthetic operons his were predicted to be regulated by histidine-dependent attenuators in Bacillus cereus and Clostridium difficile, and by histidine T-boxes in L. lactis and Streptococcus mutans.
The first part of the paper briefly overviews the problem of gene and species trees reconciliation with the focus on defining and algorithmic construction of the evolutionary scenario. Basic ideas are discussed for the aspects of mapping definitions, costs of the mapping and evolutionary scenario, imposing time scales on a scenario, incorporating horizontal gene transfers, binarization and reconciliation of polytomous trees, and construction of species trees and scenarios. The review does not intend to cover the vast diversity of literature published on these subjects. Instead, the authors strived to overview the problem of the evolutionary scenario as a central concept in many areas of evolutionary research. The second part provides detailed mathematical proofs for the solutions of two problems: (i) inferring a gene evolution along a species tree accounting for various types of evolutionary events and (ii) trees reconciliation into a single species tree when only gene duplications and losses are allowed. All proposed algorithms have a cubic time complexity and are mathematically proved to find exact solutions. Solving algorithms for problem (ii) can be naturally extended to incorporate horizontal transfers, other evolutionary events, and time scales on the species tree.
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