Ancestral sequence reconstruction and functional expression of proteins involved in bacterial magnetosome biogenesis

趋磁细菌（MTB）是一个多系细菌群，可以将亚铁磁性纳米颗粒生物矿化到特定的细胞器（磁小体）中。高度多样化的磁小体结构的生物合成由涉及约30个基因的异常复杂的基因组区域控制。它们的祖先功能以及导致它们出现和多样化的选择压力仍然不清楚。在ANCESMAG中，我们寻求i）扩大可用于MTB的基因组序列的多样性; ii）破译磁小体基因簇的结构、组成和进化; iii）重建不同分类等级的磁小体基因的祖先序列;以及iv）在模型MTB宿主中表达古蛋白并表征复活的表型。所有任务将通过将跨学科方法与古基因组学和合成生物学中开发的先进方法相结合来解决。总的来说，我们的方法将产生新的和fundamentral的见解生物矿化和细胞器功能的一般演变。

Magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) form a polyphyletic group of bacteria that biomineralize ferrimagnetic nanoparticles in specific organelles, the magnetosomes. The biosynthesis of highly diverse magnetosome structures is controlled by an unusually complex genomic region involving about 30 genes. Their ancestral function and the selective pressures that led to their emergence and diversification are still unclear. In ANCESMAG we seek to i) expand the diversity of genome sequences available for MTB; ii) decipher the structure, composition and evolution of magnetosome gene clusters; iii) reconstruct the ancestral sequences of magnetosome genes at different taxonomic ranks and iv) express the palaeoproteins in a model MTB host and characterize the resurrected phenotypes. All tasks will be addressed by coupling interdisciplinary approaches to advanced methods developed in palaeogenomics and synthetic biology. Overall, our approach will generate novel and fundamentral insights into general evolution of biomineralization and organelle function.