Intermediary metabolism in sea urchin: The first inferences from the genome sequence

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2006.08.030 Byline: Manisha Goel (a), Arcady Mushegian (a)(b) Keywords: S. purpuratus; Sea urchin; Comparative genomics; Metabolic pathways; Thiaminase; Urea cycle; Cholesterol; Phosphoglyerate mutase Abstract: The genome sequence of the purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus recently became available. We report the results of functional annotation and initial analysis of more than 2300 proteins predicted to be involved in metabolite transport and enzymatic conversion in sea urchin. The comparison of various reconstructed biosynthetic and catabolic pathways in sea urchin to those known in other genomes suggests the overall similarity of the sea urchin metabolism to that of the vertebrates, with relatively small but non-trivial differences from both vertebrates and protostomes. There are several examples of two parallel, non-orthologous solutions for the same molecular function in sea urchin, in contrast with the other completely sequenced metazoans that tend to contain just one version of the same function. There are also genes that appear to be close phylogenetic neighbors of plant or bacterial homologs, as opposed to homologs in other Metazoa. The evolutionary and functional significance of these variations is discussed. Author Affiliation: (a) Stowers Institute for Medical Research, 1000 E. 50th St., Kansas City, MO 64110, USA (b) Department of Microbiology, Molecular Genetics, and Immunology, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS 66160, USA Article History: Received 8 May 2006; Revised 10 August 2006; Accepted 16 August 2006