Reference "Evolution, structure and function of mitochondrial carriers: a review with new insights"

Reference ID

54984

Title

Evolution, structure and function of mitochondrial carriers: a review with new insights

Source

Plant J, 2011, vol. 66, pp. 161-181

Authors (5)

Palmieri-F	Pierri-C-L
De-Grassi-A	Nunes-Nesi-A
Fernie-A-R

Abstract

The mitochondrial carriers (MC) constitute a large family (MCF) of inner
membrane transporters displaying different substrate specificities, patterns of
gene expression and even non-mitochondrial organelle localization. In
Arabidopsis thaliana 58 genes encode these six trans-membrane domain proteins.
The number in other sequenced plant genomes varies from 37 to 125, thus being
larger than that of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and comparable with that of Homo
sapiens. In addition to displaying highly similar secondary structures, the
proteins of the MCF can be subdivided into subfamilies on the basis of substrate
specificity and the presence of specific symmetry-related amino acid triplets.
We assessed the predictive power of these triplets by comparing predictions with
experimentally determined data for Arabidopsis MCs, and applied these
predictions to the not yet functionally characterized mitochondrial carriers of
the grass, Brachypodium distachyon, and the alga, Ostreococcus lucimarinus. We
additionally studied evolutionary aspects of the plant MCF by comparing sequence
data of the Arabidopsis MCF with those of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Homo
sapiens, then with those of Brachypodium distachyon and Ostreococcus
lucimarinus, employing intra- and inter-genome comparisons. Finally, we
discussed the importance of the approaches of global gene expression analysis
and in vivo characterizations in order to address the relevance of these vital
carrier proteins.