Origin and Evolution of the Mitochondrial Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetases

Many theories favor a fusion of 2 prokaryotic genomes for the origin of the Eukaryotes, but there are disagreements on the origin, timing, and cellular structures of the cells involved. Equally controversial is the source of the nuclear genes for mitochondrial proteins, although the alpha-proteobacterial contribution to the mitochondrial genome is well established. Phylogenetic inferences show that the nuclearly encoded mitochondrial aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRSs) occupy a position in the tree that is not close to any of the currently sequenced alpha-proteobacterial genomes, despite cohesive and remarkably well-resolved alpha-proteobacterial clades in 12 of the 20 trees. Two or more alpha-proteobacterial clusters were observed in 8 cases, indicative of differential loss of paralogous genes or horizontal gene transfer. Replacement and retargeting events within the nuclear genomes of the Eukaryotes was indicated in 10 trees, 4 of which also show split alpha-proteobacterial groups. A majority of the mitochondrial aaRSs originate from within the bacterial domain, but none specifically from the alpha-Proteobacteria. For some aaRS, the endosymbiotic origin may have been erased by ongoing gene replacements on the bacterial as well as the eukaryotic side. For others that accurately resolve the alpha-proteobacterial divergence patterns, the lack of affiliation with mitochondria is more surprising. We hypothesize that the ancestral eukaryotic gene pool hosted primordial "bacterial-like" genes, to which a limited set of alpha-proteobacterial genes, mostly coding for components of the respiratory chain complexes, were added and selectively maintained.