Poster Presentation Australian Society for Microbiology Annual Scientific Meeting 2022

Skeletons out of the closet: evolution of the dynamic cytoskeleton unveiled by the Asgard Archaea lineage (#104)

Stephanie-Jane Nobs 1 2 , Fraser I MacLeod 1 2 , Katharine Michie 1 3 , Brendan P Burns 1 2
  1. School of Biotechnology and Biological Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  2. Australian Centre for Astrobiology , University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  3. Structural Biology Facility - Mark Wainwright Analytical Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

The origin of the Eukaryotic cell, and its complex cytoskeleton, remains an enigma in evolutionary biology. Current metagenomic data suggests that Eukaryotes emerged from the Asgard Archaea Superphylum, a newly discovered lineage that encode a vast repertoire of genes that were formerly thought to be unique to Eukaryotes. Two key cytoskeletal proteins, actin and tubulin, have been previously identified in Metagenome Assembled Genomes (MAGs) of Asgard members, which suggest that ancestral Asgard lineages were capable of Eukaryotic-like cytoskeleton dynamics before the advent of Eukarya. Notably, the presence of the Eukaryotic actin homologue ‘lokiactin’ appears widespread among the genomes of Asgard Superphyla, while a tubulin homologue has only been identified in a single MAG from the phyla Odinarchaeota. However, confirming the physiological presence and spread of the cytoskeletal proteins and determining their functions has remained elusive due the lack of cultured representatives from the Asgard superphyla and the limited number of high-quality genomes. To unveil further insight of the Asgard cytoskeleton, novel MAGs were assembled in the present study from enrichment cultures containing members of the Asgard phyla Lokiarchaeota. In addition to lokiactin sequences, multiple novel tubulin sequences were uncovered across Lokiarchaeota MAGs. Uniquely, two tubulins were encoded alongside each other in an operon-like structure, which correlate with Eukaryotic alpha- and beta-tubulin in phylogenetic analyses. Furthermore, in silico protein modelling with AlphaFold2 indicates that the tubulin operon can produce an alpha/beta tubulin heterodimer – the main constituent of Eukaryotic microtubules integral to cell function. Preliminary visualization studies of the enrichment culture, which combined fluorescent in situ hybridization of transcript annealing molecular beacons (FISH-TAMB) with eukaryotic anti-beta-tubulin antibody staining, confirmed the presence of eukaryotic tubulin homologues in Asgard Archaea. Preliminary data suggests that heterodimeric tubulin is a keepsake of the ancestral Asgard lineage that gave rise to Eukarya. As such, this work on Asgard tubulins may illuminate the evolutionary shifts that occurred between the Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic cytoskeleton during eukaryogenesis.