DETECTING EVOLUTIONARY TRANSFER OF GENES USING PhIGs1

Organisms have acquired plastids by convoluted paths that have provided multiple opportunities for gene transfer into a host nucleus from intracellular organisms, including the cyanobacterial ancestor of plastids, the proteobacterial ancestor of mitochondria, and both green and red algae whose engulfment has led to secondary acquisition of plastids. These gene movements are most accurately demonstrated by building phylogenetic trees that identify the evolutionary origin of each gene, and one effective tool for this is “PhIGs” (Phylogenetically Inferred Groups; http://PhIGs.org ), a set of databases and computer tools with a Web interface for whole‐genome evolutionary analysis. PhIGs takes as input gene sets of completely sequenced genomes, builds clusters of genes using a novel, graph‐based approach, and reconstructs the evolutionary relationships among all gene families. The user can view and download the sequence alignments, compare intron‐exon structures, and follow links to functional genomic databases. Currently, PhIGs contains 652,756 genes from 45 genomes grouped into 61,059 gene families. Graphical displays show the relative positions of these genes among genomes. PhIGs has been used to detect the evolutionary transfer of hundreds of genes from cyanobacteria and red algae into oömycete nuclear genomes, revealing that even though they have no plastids, their ancestors did, having secondarily acquired them from an intracellular red alga. A great number of genomes are soon to become available that are relevant to our broader understanding of the movement of genes among intracellular compartments after engulfing other organisms, and PhIGs will be an effective tool to interpret these gene movements.