First #bluetorial. 🎉🎉 We’re very happy to share our latest biorxiv #preprint, just in time before the holiday season. We explored how transposable elements (TEs) diversify eukaryotic proteomes and found a cool case in nematode F-box genes. #TEsky #evosky #Celegans Short 🧵 with highlights. - ThreadSky

migueldvalmeida.bsky.social • 68 days ago

First #bluetorial. 🎉🎉 We’re very happy to share our latest biorxiv #preprint, just in time before the holiday season. We explored how transposable elements (TEs) diversify eukaryotic proteomes and found a cool case in nematode F-box genes. #TEsky #evosky #Celegans

Short 🧵 with highlights.

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cslamo.bsky.social•67 days ago

📌

migueldvalmeida.bsky.social•68 days ago

How do novel proteins emerge? François Jacob compared Evolution to a tinkerer, with novelty arising as a result of rearrangement of available pieces. This can be applied to protein evolution, with novel proteins arising through the shuffling of different pre-existing domains.

migueldvalmeida.bsky.social•68 days ago

TEs often encode the protein machinery they need to mobilise from one locus to another. It is well established that these coding sequences can fuse to host genes, increasing protein diversity and potentially bringing about novel functions.

migueldvalmeida.bsky.social•68 days ago

We used publicly available protein data to screen 10 million eukaryotic proteins and found 12,803 proteins with domains that define multi-copy gene families together with TE domains.

How to find interesting biology among all those hits?

migueldvalmeida.bsky.social•68 days ago

We had a look at the largest sets of proteins with the same co-occurring domains and their phylogenetic distribution. One set of around 500 proteins caught our eye because these are restricted to one of our favourite nematode genus: Caenorhabditis.

migueldvalmeida.bsky.social•68 days ago

These proteins have a Tc1/Mariner-derived Helix-turn-helix (HTH) domain and an F-box domain. After some phylogenomics detective work, we figured out that the HTH domain was captured by an F-box gene and subsequently expanded, creating a novel class of F-box genes, the A2 family.

migueldvalmeida.bsky.social•68 days ago

We explored the functions of some of the A2 genes most highly expressed in the C. elegans germline and found roles in germ granule localisation, fertility, and thermotolerance. Importantly, the TE-derived HTH domain is required for these processes!

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