Abstract
The oxygenase reaction catalyzed by RuBisCO became an issue only after the evolution of the oxygenic photosynthesis in cyanobacteria. Several strategies were developed by autotrophic organisms as an evolutionary response to increase oxygen levels to help RuBisCO maximize its net carboxylation rate. One of the crucial advancements in this context was the development of more efficient inorganic carbon transporters which could help in increasing the influx of inorganic carbon (Ci) at the site of CO2 fixation. We conducted a survey to find out the genes coding for cyanobacterial Ci transporters in 40 cyanobacterial phyla with respect to transporters present in Gloeobacter violaceous PCC 7421, an early-diverging cyanobacterium. An attempt was also made to correlate the prevalence of the kind of transporter present in the species with its habitat. Basically, two types of cyanobacterial inorganic carbon transporters exist, i.e. bicarbonate transporters and CO2-uptake systems. The transporters also show variation in context to their structure as some exist as single subunit proteins (BicA and SbtA), while others exist as multisubunit proteins (namely BCT1, NdhI3 and NdhI4). The phylogeny and distribution of the former have been extensively studied and the present analysis provides an insight into the latter ones. The in silico analysis of the genes under study revealed that their distribution was greatly influenced by the habitat and major environmental changes such as the great oxidation event (GOE) in the course of their evolution.
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Acknowledgements
Authors are grateful to Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Rajasthan, India, for providing infrastructural and logistic support. VT is thankful to DST-inspire fellowship programme of DST, India. GKS is thankful to the UGC-BSR for her fellowship. PN is thankful to CSIR for senior research fellowship. This work was supported by SERB fast track project SERC/LS-0141/2010 sanctioned by the government of India to SM.
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Tomar V., Sidhu G. K., Nogia P., Mehrotra R. and Mehrotra S. 2016 Role of habitat and great oxidation event on the occurrence of three multisubunit inorganic carbon-uptake systems in cyanobacteria. J. Genet. 95, xx–xx
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TOMAR, V., SIDHU, G.K., NOGIA, P. et al. Role of habitat and great oxidation event on the occurrence of three multisubunit inorganic carbon-uptake systems in cyanobacteria. J Genet 95, 109–118 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12041-015-0606-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12041-015-0606-x