For instance, iron is a limiting nutrient in surface waters for diatoms. Therefore, the likely acquisition of ferritin by HGT from bacteria has permitted some spe cies to acquire this nutrient Belinostat mw from the environment. This is also the case for the diatom Phaeodactylum, in which nitrogen metabolism, cell wall silification, DNA replication, genome repair and recombination processes have been shaped by HGT. HGT seems also to play an important role in oomycetes since it may be involved in osmotrophy. Genes involved in absorbing products of degradation of complex nutrients were pre dicted to be candidates for fungi to oomycete HGT. By analyzing the set of predicted genes in Blastocystis sp. that are homologous to bacterial or archaeal genes, we identified 133 candidates for HGT.

In most cases, our Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries phylogenetic analyses confirm the bacterial origin of these genes even if they were not sufficiently resolved to allow the precise identi fication of the donor, suggesting that these HGT events were ancient and or that the corresponding genes are rapidly evolving in the genome of Blastocystis sp. Inter estingly, in a few cases, even when the transferred gene is of bacterial origin, the Blastocystis sp. copy is closely related to homologues found in pathogenic and or anaerobic eukaryotes, suggesting that HGT between eukaryotes has played a key role in these organisms too. Some of the genes that originated from HGT possess functions that lead to a better understanding of how this lineage emerged. Three are homologous to the bacterial major facilitator transporter, the first two being nearly identical, and therefore resulting from a recent gene duplication event.

MFS proteins form a large and diverse group of secondary transporters, Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries which facilitate the transport across membranes of a variety of substrates, including ions, sugar phosphates, drugs, neurotransmit ters, nucleosides, amino acids and peptides. Two Blastocystis MFS genes have closely related Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries homologues in some pathogenic eukaryotes like the Alveolata Perkin sus marinus or fungi such as Gibberella zeae and Verticil lium albo atrum, suggesting an acquisition from bacteria followed by HGT between Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries these eukaryotes. However, the phylogeny resolution Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries is too low to precisely identify the bacterial donor of these genes. The presence of MSF proteins in Blastocystis sp. may confer the ability to absorb nutrients from the environment to this parasite, particularly in the intestinal lumen or when attacking host tissues. We have also found different HGT table 1 genes harboring alcohol deshydro genase, short chain dehydrogenase and oxidoreductase domains that may be involved in specific fermentations that remain to be char acterized.