%0 Journal Article
%T Genome of Acanthamoeba castellanii highlights extensive lateral gene transfer and early evolution of tyrosine kinase signaling
%A Michael Clarke
%A Amanda J Lohan
%A Bernard Liu
%A Ilias Lagkouvardos
%A Scott Roy
%A Nikhat Zafar
%A Claire Bertelli
%A Christina Schilde
%A Arash Kianianmomeni
%A Thomas R Burglin
%A Christian Frech
%A Bernard Turcotte
%A Klaus O Kopec
%A John M Synnott
%A Caleb Choo
%A Ivan Paponov
%A Aliza Finkler
%A Chris Soon Heng Tan
%A Andrew P Hutchins
%A Thomas Weinmeier
%A Thomas Rattei
%A Jeffery SC Chu
%A Gregory Gimenez
%A Manuel Irimia
%A Daniel J Rigden
%A David A Fitzpatrick
%A Jacob Lorenzo-Morales
%A Alex Bateman
%A Cheng-Hsun Chiu
%A Petrus Tang
%J Genome Biology
%D 2013
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/gb-2013-14-2-r11
%X Ac encodes 15,455 compact intron rich genes a significant number of which are predicted to have arisen through interkingdom lateral gene transfer (LGT). A majority of the LGT candidates have undergone a substantial degree of intronization and Ac appears to have incorporated them into established transcriptional programs. Ac manifests a complex signaling and cell communication repertoire including a complete tyrosine kinase signaling toolkit and a comparable diversity of predicted extracellular receptors to that found in the facultatively multicellular dictyostelids. An important environmental host of a diverse range of bacteria and viruses, Ac utilizes a diverse repertoire of predicted pattern recognition receptors many with predicted orthologous functions in the innate immune systems of higher organisms.Our analysis highlights the important role of LGT in the biology of Ac and in the diversification of microbial eukaryotes. The early evolution of a key signaling facility implicated in the evolution of metazoan multicellularity strongly argues for its emergence early in the Unikont lineage. Overall the availability of an Ac genome should aid in deciphering the biology of the Amoebozoa and facilitate functional genomic studies in this important model organism and environmental host.
%U http://genomebiology.com/2013/14/2/R11/abstract