The evolution of actin nucleation - understanding the history of the players

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The understanding of actin nucleation has made a great leap with the identification of new proteins involved. Whereas the experimental characterisation is taking a great step forward, understanding the evolution of actin nucleation lacks behind. In this project, we will analyse the evolutionary history of the players involved in actin nucleation and their interplay over the whole eukaryotic tree of life. First, we will build up an automatic pipeline for their identification to get an overview of expansions and contractions in different taxa. Following, we will dig into the detailed history to understand the evolutionary forces driving these changes. Finally, we will integrate these results with proteomic data, to understand the evolution the actin nucleation protein interaction network. As a special project, we will analyse the WH2 domain, one of the arguably most important domains in actin nucleation which still refuses a reliable detection. As part of the SPP, we will develop a web resource for the evolution of actin nucleation. In the final step, members of the SPP will be able to add their own data and analyse them under an evolutionary perspective. Although this web service can stand alone, it would win by a tight integration with the ‘virtual institute of actin nucleation’.