Origin and evolution of alginate-c5-mannuronan-epimerase gene based on transcriptomic analysis of brown algae

The coding product of alginate-c5-mannuronan-epimerase gene （algG gene） can catalyze the conversion of mannuronate to guluronate and determine the M/G ratio of alginate. Most of the current knowledge about genes involved in the alginate biosynthesis comes from bacterial systems. In this article, based on some algal and bacterial algG genes registered on GenBank and EMBL databases, we predicted 94 algG genes open reading frame （ORF） sequences of brown algae from the 1 000 Plant Transcriptome Sequencing Project （OneKP）. By method of transcriptomic sequence analysis, gene structure and gene localization analysis, multiple sequence alignment and phylogenetic tree construction, we studied the algal algG gene family characteristics, the structure modeling and conserved motifs of AlgG protein, the origin of alginate biosyn-thesis and the variation incidents that might have happened during evolution in algae. Although there are different members in the algal algG gene family, almost all of them harbor the conserved epimerase region. Based on the phylogenetic analysis of algG genes, we proposed that brown algae acquired the alginate bio-synthesis pathway from an ancient bacterium by horizontal gene transfer （HGT）. Afterwards, followed by duplications, chromosome disorder, mutation or recombination during evolution, brown algal algG genes were divided into different types.