Discovery notes

Two new families of the FtsZ-tubulin protein superfamily implicated in membrane remodeling in diverse bacteria and archaea

Kira S Makarova and Eugene V Koonin^*

• * Corresponding author: Eugene V Koonin koonin@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Author Affiliations

National Center for Biotechnology Information, NLM, National Institutes of Health Bethesda, Maryland 20894, USA

For all author emails, please log on.

Biology Direct 2010, 5:33 doi:10.1186/1745-6150-5-33

Published: 7 May 2010

Abstract

Several recent discoveries reveal unexpected versatility of the bacterial and archaeal cytoskeleton systems that are involved in cell division and other processes based on membrane remodeling. Here we apply methods for distant protein sequence similarity detection, phylogenetic approaches, and genome context analysis to described two previously unnoticed families of the FtsZ-tubulin superfamily. One of these families is limited in its spread to Proteobacteria whereas the other is represented in diverse bacteria and archaea, and might be the key component of a novel, multicomponent membrane remodeling system that also includes a Von Willebrand A domain-containing protein, a distinct GTPase and membrane transport proteins of the OmpA family.

This article was reviewed by Purificación López-García and Gáspár Jékely; for complete reviews, see the Reviewers Reports section.