Assessing the effects of a sequestered germline on interdomain lateral gene transfer in Metazoa

Abstract

A sequestered germline in Metazoa has been argued to be an obstacle to lateral gene transfer (LGT), though few studies have specifically assessed this claim. Here, we test the hypothesis that the origin of a sequestered germline reduced LGT events in Bilateria (i.e., triploblast lineages) as compared to early-diverging Metazoa (i.e., Ctenophora, Cnidaria, Porifera, and Placozoa). We analyze single-gene phylogenies generated with over 900 species sampled from among Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryota to identify well-supported interdomain LGTs. We focus on ancient interdomain LGT (i.e., those between prokaryotes and multiple lineages of Metazoa) as systematic errors in single-gene tree reconstruction create uncertainties for interpreting eukaryote-to-eukaryote transfer. The breadth of the sampled Metazoa enables us to estimate the timing of LGTs, and to examine the pattern before versus after the evolution of a sequestered germline. We identified 58 LGTs found only in Metazoa and prokaryotes (i.e., bacteria and/or archaea), and seven genes transferred from prokaryotes into Metazoa plus one other eukaryotic clade. Our analyses indicate that more interdomain transfers occurred before the development of a sequestered germline, consistent with the hypothesis that this feature is an obstacle to LGT.

Keywords: Animals; Metazoa; gene loss; horizontal gene transfer; lateral gene transfer; weak link model.