Week 4 => Organelles and their genomes Flashcards
(102 cards)
What are organelles?
While most cell biologists consider the term organelle to be synonymous with cell compartment, a space often bound by one or two lipid bilayers, some cell biologists choose to limit the term to include ONLY THEOSE CELL COMPRTMANETS THAT CONTAING DNA, having originated from formerly autonomous microscopic organisms acquired via ENDOSYMBIOSIS
Where are organelles found?
Cytosol (fluid that contains organelles; with which, comprises cytoplasm)
Why comparing what sequence in Mt DNA of various eukaryotes, various bacteria, and archaea where the origins of mitochondria narrowed down to?
Ribosomal RNA gene
What two bacterial endosymbionts are hypothesized to the source of mitochondria based on their 16S ribosomal RNA sequence?
Agrobacterium tumefaciens and Pseudomonas testosteroni
What do Agrobacterium tumefaciens and Pseudomonas testosteroni represent of the so-called purple bacteria?
the alpha and beta subdivision respectively
What is alphaproteobacteria?
Agrobacterium tumefaciens
Which endosymbiont subdivision have rise to mitochondria?
The alpha subdivision, a group that also contains the rhizobacteria, the agrobacteria, and the rickettsia’s - all the prokaryotes that have developed intracellular or other close relationships with eukaryotic cells
Rickettsia Prowazekii (R. prowazekki)
- an aerobic intracellular pathogen
- Causative agent of epidemic typhus
- Genome is approximately 1.1 MBp and has 834 protein genes
- Intriguing similarities with mitochondria (e.g., AT-biased, reduced genome), but nevertheless clearly the product of independent reduction evolution
- Decedent of alphaproteobacterial lineage
Mitochondrial genomes can be:
- circular
- circular mapping
- linear with short (3-100 bp) terminal repeats (triangles and diamonds)
The conventional multipart model of mitochondria genome
Where recombination between large repeats interconverts between a master circle conformation and a set of sub genomic circles
Alternative physical structure of mitochondrial genome that can all produce circular genomes?
- Circular chromosome
- Head-to-tail concatemers
- Circularly permutated linear molecules
What have gene-poor, compact mitochondria genomes?
Animals, fungi, and many single-celled eukaryotes
Homo sapiens mtDNA
- 16569 bp
- non-stranded genetic code (UGA as tryptophan, AUA as methionine, not isoleucine)
- 13 protein genes (All part of electron transport chain)
- 22 tRNA
Plasmodium falciparum (malaria parasite) mitochondrial genome
- 5967 bps
- stranded genetic code
- 3 protein genes
- fragmented rRNA genes
- no tRNA genes (tRNA must be imported from host)
What has gene-rich mitochondrial genomes?
Jakobid flagellates
Example of Jakobid flagellates bacteria
Reclinomonas americana, a freshwater protist
Reclinomonas americana mtDNA key features
- Reclinomas and its relatives have the most gene-rich mtDNAs known
- 100 genes (approximetly 65 protein genes)
- Shine-Dalgarno (ribosome-binding) sequences
- genome encodes RNA component of RNAse P (a tRNA processing complex)
- strikingly bacterial four-subunit RNA polymerase (all other eukaryotes have a single-subunit phage-type RNA polymerase)
What have bloated mitochondrial gneomes?
Plants
Bloated mitochondrial genomes
- 1685 kb mitochondrial genomes of cucumber consisting of THREE circular-mapping chromosomes
- large size result of proliferation of repeats, introns and acquisition of genes from nuclear and chloroplast genomes, viruses, and bacteria
- Chloroplast sequences include functional tRNA genes
What may explain apparent unidirectional plasmid-to-mitochondrion gene transfer?
Mitochondria are known to have a \DNA uptake system, while chloroplasts (plasmids) do not
Mitochondrial genome size vs coding capacity
Non-coding DNA accounts for most of the genome size variation seen in mitochondria (thus larger size more non-coding DNA)
Mitochondrion-related organelles (MROs)
Reduced, simplified “remnants” of mitochondria
Hydrogenosomes
- an MRO
- Peculiar eukaryotic organelles that generate ATP and evolve H2 gas
- Have evolved (from mitochondria) multiple times independently
- Some have a small genome, other have no genome at all
- some enzymes involved in anaerobic hydrogenesomal biochemistry appear to have been acquired from anaerobic bacteria by LGT
- Site of iron-sulfate cluster biogenesis (reason they persist)
Mitosome
- Mitosomes are mitochondrion-related organelles found in a range of unicellular eukaryotic organisms that inhabit oxygen-poor environments.
- MROs