Journal of Biological Chemistry
Volume 286, Issue 34, 26 August 2011, Pages 29893-29903
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Lipids
Identification of Plant-like Galactolipids in Chromera velia, a Photosynthetic Relative of Malaria Parasites*

https://doi.org/10.1074/jbc.M111.254979Get rights and content
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Apicomplexa are protist parasites that include Plasmodium spp., the causative agents of malaria, and Toxoplasma gondii, responsible for toxoplasmosis. Most Apicomplexa possess a relict plastid, the apicoplast, which was acquired by secondary endosymbiosis of a red alga. Despite being nonphotosynthetic, the apicoplast is otherwise metabolically similar to algal and plant plastids and is essential for parasite survival. Previous studies of Toxoplasma gondii identified membrane lipids with some structural features of plastid galactolipids, the major plastid lipid class. However, direct evidence for the plant-like enzymes responsible for galactolipid synthesis in Apicomplexan parasites has not been obtained. Chromera velia is an Apicomplexan relative recently discovered in Australian corals. C. velia retains a photosynthetic plastid, providing a unique model to study the evolution of the apicoplast. Here, we report the unambiguous presence of plant-like monogalactosyldiacylglycerol and digalactosyldiacylglycerol in C. velia and localize digalactosyldiacylglycerol to the plastid. We also provide evidence for a plant-like biosynthesis pathway and identify candidate galactosyltranferases responsible for galactolipid synthesis. Our study provides new insights in the evolution of these important enzymes in plastid-containing eukaryotes and will help reconstruct the evolution of glycerolipid metabolism in important parasites such as Plasmodium and Toxoplasma.

Chloroplast
Evolution
Glycerolipid
Mass Spectrometry (MS)
Membrane Lipids
Apicomplexa
Chromera velia
Apicoplast
Galactolipid/Galactosyltransferase
Plastid Evolution

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The nucleotide sequence(s) reported in this paper has been submitted to the Gen-Bank™/EBI Data Bank with accession number(s) JF912518 and JF912519.

*

This work was supported in part by European Research Council FP7 Marie Curie Actions via an International Outgoing Fellowship Marie Curie fellowship (to C. Y. B.), National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, CNRS, and Agence Nationale de la Recherche ReGal grant (to E. M.).

The on-line version of this article (available at http://www.jbc.org) contains supplemental Figs. S1–S5.

1

Both authors contributed equally to this work.

2

National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia Principal Research Fellow.

3

Both authors are senior authors.