期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2003
卷号：100
期号：18
页码：10320-10325
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1737230100
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a high GC Gram-positive member of the actinobacteria. The mycobacterial cell wall is composed of a complex assortment of lipids and is the interface between the bacterium and its environment. The biosynthesis of fatty acids plays an essential role in the formation of cell wall components, in particular mycolic acids, which have been targeted by many of the drugs used to treat M. tuberculosis infection. M. tuberculosis has {approx}250 genes involved in fatty acid metabolism, a much higher proportion than in any other organism. In silico methods have been used to compare the genome of M. tuberculosis CDC1551 to a database of 58 complete bacterial genomes. The resulting alignments were scanned for genes specifically involved in fatty acid biosynthetic pathway I. Phylogenetic analysis of these alignments was used to investigate horizontal gene transfer, gene duplication, and adaptive evolution. It was found that of the eight gene families examined, five of the phylogenies reconstructed suggest that the actinobacteria have a closer relationship with the -proteobacteria than expected. This is either due to either an ancient transfer of genes or deep paralogy and subsequent retention of the genes in unrelated lineages. Additionally, adaptive evolution and gene duplication have been an influence in the evolution of the pathway. This study provides a key insight into how M. tuberculosis has developed its unique fatty acid synthetic abilities.
