BACKGROUND
the genome sequence of the bacterial hyperthermophile thermotoga maritima revealed evidence of extensive horizontal gene transfer  with archaea  <cit> .
subsequent analyses of its genome sequence along with analyses of large tracts of sequences from other members of the thermotogales have supported and extended this observation  <cit> .
many of the genes that have been shared with archaea encode atp binding cassette  transporters.
although originally characterized as oligopeptide transporter genes, analysis of the substrate binding proteins encoded by these operons showed that oligosaccharides are their likely substrates  <cit> .
the tt.
maritima genome encodes many other abc transporters.
indeed, its genome encodes the second highest proportion of atp-dependent transporter genes  among currently sequenced bacterial and archaeal genomes  <cit> .
some of the tt.
maritima transporters have been experimentally shown to encode sugar binding proteins  <cit>  including two proteins that bind maltose  <cit> .
horizontal acquisition of transporter genes also occurred among the hyperthermophilic archaea.
a striking example of this is the complex evolutionary history of the mal operons in the thermococcales as depicted in figure  <dig>  while the genomes of pyrococcus woesei, p. abyssi, p. horikoshii, and thermococcus kodakarensis all encode one mal operon, the genomes of p. furiosus and tc.
litoralis each encode two  <cit> .
the second mal genes found in each of the latter two organisms  are orthologous to the genes in the single operons of the former organisms.
the mdx operon in p. furiosus  encodes a maltodextrin binding protein  and is upregulated in response to growth on maltose and starch  <cit> .
in p. furiosus, the mal operon  encodes malepf, a protein that binds maltose and trehalose, but it does not appear to function as its major maltose transporter  <cit> .
the orthologous mal products in tc.
litoralis have been extensively studied  <cit> .
the region encoding the mal genes are flanked by insertion sequences in both p. furiosus and tc.
litoralis suggesting these genes were shared between these organisms by hgt  <cit> .
the similarity of the two malk homologs  in tc.
litoralis  suggests that one of them arose by a duplication of the other  <cit> .
subsequently, the mal-linked malk transferred to the ancestor of p. furiosus along with the entire mal operon  <cit>  .
this history of horizontal transfer of archaeal mal genes raises the possibility that bacterial thermophiles that live among these archaea may also have shared these maltose operons.
tt.
maritima was originally isolated from sediments on vulcano island, italy, the same area from which p. furiosus and tc.
litoralis were isolated  <cit> .
hamilton-brehm, et al.
speculated that because these two archaea lived together, they were more likely to exchange mal genes  <cit> , so it is conceivable that bacteria living among them, like the ancestor of tt.
maritima, might have acquired those genes, too.
there is evidence of transfer of whole operons to the thermotoga lineage from the thermococcales.
most striking, perhaps, is the horizontal transfer of the twelve-gene mbx operon encoding an nadh:ubiquinone oxidoreductase complex that is now found adjacent to the mal <dig> operon in tt.
maritima  <cit> .
a simple blast analysis of the tt.
maritima mal amino acid sequences suggested they are of bacterial origin  <cit> .
the two sets of tt.
maritima mal genes are their closest homologs indicating a duplication event or hgt within the thermotogales lineage gave rise to one of them.
other blast hits are mainly to bacterial sequences, though some archaeal sequences are also retrieved.
although these data suggest the tt.
maritima mal genes are of bacterial origin, no rigorous phylogenetic analysis has been published that rules out the possibility that these apparently bacterial genes originated from archaeal genes and perhaps were a part of the archaeal hgt events described above.
this report provides a detailed examination of the evolutionary history of these mal genes.
the tt.
maritima mal genes are in two operons each containing three, collinearly transcribed genes encoding a substrate binding protein  and two membrane-spanning proteins .
however, the malf2ttm orf is truncated and contains an authentic frameshift mutation.
a short orf  precedes it.
neither operon contains a gene encoding the necessary atp-binding protein  that provides the energy for substrate transport.
the mal1ttm operon  encodes an apparent mannooligosaccharide transporter that also can bind maltose and maltotriose  <cit> .
the mal2ttm operon  encodes a maltose and trehalose transporter  <cit> .
recently, genome sequence data of several other members of the thermotogales have become available.
sequence data from the genomes of fervidobacterium nodosum, thermosipho melanesiensis, thermotoga petrophila, thermotoga lettingae and others are publicly available and a partial genome sequence of thermotoga neapolitana is available from the institute for genomic research.
this information from other thermotogales species provides data to examine how the mal operons have evolved within this lineage and perhaps can provide evidence about the duplication event that gave rise to the two mal operons now found in tt.
maritima.
in this examination of the deep phylogenetic relationships among the hyperthermophiles' mal genes, we also uncovered unreported features of the thermotogales mal protein sequences that not only enlighten our understanding of their evolutionary histories, but also suggest novel structural or functional features of the transporter proteins.
RESULTS
evolution of the mal and mdx genes in the thermococcales
previous sequence comparisons using blast analyses indicated that one mal operon  transferred from an ancestor of tc.
litoralis to an ancestor of p. furiosus, likely involving a transposition mediated by the insertion sequences now found in p. furiosus  <cit> .
based on a simple comparison of the genes encoding abps in the mal and mdx operons in tc.
litoralis with their homologs in p. furiosus, a copy of an ancestral mdxk gene  was postulated to have recombined downstream of the mal1an operon in an ancestor of tc.
litoralis , where it now encodes the abp for the mal-encoded transporter  <cit> .
this ancestral mdxk could have originated from gene duplication or horizontal acquisition.
we performed phylogenetic analysis of all the proteins encoded by the mal and mdx operons to test these hypotheses and to determine the origins of these evolutionarily mobile genes.
the mdxepf  protein sequence was used as a query for a blast search of the non-redundant protein database at ncbi.
the top  <dig> hits were aligned using clustalx and then used to construct neighbor joining trees.
using these preliminary relationships as a guide, sequences were chosen from archaea, thermotogales species, and bacteria closely related to the archaeal sequences to represent a broad spectrum of taxa.
these selected sequences were then placed in a new database .
associated malf and malg protein sequences were concatenated with each male-like sequence only if these three orfs were the only orfs in an apparent abc transporter operon.
these concatenated sequences were aligned and their phylogenetic relationships were examined by maximum likelihood  and bayesian analyses.
the tree constructed from this ml analysis is shown in figure  <dig> with ml bootstrap values and bayesian posterior probabilities for each analysis placed thereon.
the most obvious feature of this tree in regard to the thermococcales sequences is the independent evolution of the archaeal mal and mdx operons.
the distant evolutionary relationship of these two operons is well supported.
the mdx sequences cluster with strong support with those from other archaea while the mal sequences cluster separate from other archaeal sequences.
the latter cluster with sequences from a variety of bacteria including cyanobacteria and members of the thermotogales.
these data support the independent evolution of these two sets of genes and suggest that the mal genes found in tc.
litoralis and p. furiosus were acquired from a bacterium by an ancestral member of the thermococcales .
we shall discuss the relationship of these thermotogales operons to the thermococcales mal operons after considering the history of the thermococcales malk genes.
evolution of the malk/mdxk genes and their thermotogales homologs
the archaeal malk genes have undergone a very different evolutionary history than those in their adjoining mal operons.
we examined the relationships among malk homologs using both mrbayes and phyml and both gave similar, though not identical trees, each with overall relatively weak support.
however, within those trees, clusters of strong support were found and these provide reliable information about the evolutionary relationships within those clusters.
as shown in the phyml-derived phylogeny in figure  <dig>  all the thermococcales malk and mdxk homologs group together in a well-supported clade.
this supports the hypothesis that an ancestral malk2an homolog either was duplicated in an ancestral thermococcales or was horizontally acquired by that ancestor from another thermococcales.
the malk2an was later transferred along with the mal1an operon to a p. furiosus ancestor   <cit> .
in these genomes, these malk genes are near, but not immediately adjacent to, the three-gene mal/mdx abc operons, each encoding two msps and one sbp.
an amylopullulanase gene typically separates the malk homolog from the other genes, but some of these clusters have more genes in the intervening region, perhaps indicative of other hgt or deletion events in some species.
since the tt.
maritima mal operons do not contain adjacent malk homologs, we sought in this tree any indication of the identity of a possible thermotoga malk homolog, perhaps derived from the archaeal malk or mdxk genes.
unfortunately, only two tt.
maritima orfs appear in fig.
<dig> among archaeal sequences and all are distantly related to the thermococcales malk/mdxk cluster.
the functions of these archaeal transporters are unknown and since none of their abp or msp homologs appeared in the blast results using the p. furiosus male, malf or malg sequences as queries, they unlikely to be mal-related abps.
a function of tm <dig>  one of the tt.
maritima orfs found in the vicinity of these archaeal sequences , has been suggested.
data has indicated that it is a myo-inositol transporter's abp   <cit> .
the function of the other orf, tm <dig>  is unknown, though its expression was reported to be upregulated when tt.
maritima was grown in co-culture with methanocaldococcus jannaschii  <cit> .
a relatively weakly supported cluster of thermotogales orfs apparent in fig.
<dig> is unrelated to any archaeal orfs.
this cluster includes the tt.
maritima orf tm <dig> which, based upon gene expression data, has been suggested to encode a maltose transporter abp  <cit> .
unfortunately this analysis does not provide additional support for that observation.
it does not appear that any archaeal malk/mdxk homolog was acquired by ancestors of the currently sequenced species of thermotogales.
discovery of a third mal operon in some members of the thermotogales
using the p. furiosus male sequence as a query, homologs were revealed in the genome sequences from f. nodosum, ts.
melanesiensis, tt.
petrophila, and tt.
neapolitana but not tt.
maritima .
each of these genomes contains complete malf and malg genes downstream from this male homolog in the order malefg.
for tt.
petrophila and tt.
neapolitana this reveals a third apparent mal operon.
ts.
melanesiensis and f. nodosum have only one other mal operon , so this is a second for them.
this third operon is closely more related to the mal operons of tc.
litoralis and p. furiosus than are the mal <dig> and mal <dig> operons .
although in that figure they may appear to be specific relatives of one another, that relationship is not strongly supported by either maximum likelihood or bayesian analyses.
to examine the possibility of hgt of these mal <dig> genes between the archaea and the thermotogales, we aligned and analyzed sequences from several additional bacteria in the clade that includes mal <dig>  that analysis, shown in figure  <dig>  does not show a specific association of the thermococcales mal sequences with these thermotogales sequences, discounting the possibility of hgt of these genes between the thermococcales and thermotogales.
interestingly, the additional mal operon in tt.
lettingae  is not closely related to its homologs in the other members of the thermotogales.
it is also not a specific relative of the archaeal mal genes.
it was likely acquired from a bacterial group different than the donor to the other thermotogales.
phylogenetic history of the thermotogales mal <dig> and mal <dig> genes
although the tt.
maritima mal paralogs are associated with sequences from enteric bacteria in the p. furiosus mdxe-derived phylogeny , the resolution of that analysis was too low to determine the detailed relationships among the bacterial orthologs.
to examine the tt.
maritima mal1/mal <dig> evolutionary history in detail and to determine the relationships among the mal <dig> and mal <dig> genes in the thermotogales, we used the male1ttm  sequence as a query and selected from that dataset sequences from those genes that are arranged in three-gene operons as described previously.
those sequences were concatenated with their malf and malg partners.
the concatenated sequences from the mdxpf operon was included as an outgroup and all these concatenates were aligned using clustalx.
trees were constructed using ml and bayesian analyses as above.
the resulting phylogenetic tree  grouped thermotogales sequences together and the relative arrangement of species in this group reflects their branching order as derived using 16s rrna gene sequence comparisons  <cit> .
tt.
lettingae, f. nodosum, and ts.
melanesiensis have only one of this type of mal operon while the remaining three thermotoga species each have two of this kind .
these mal operons in f. nodosum and ts.
melanesiensis are related to one another to the exclusion of those from the thermotoga species.
the single tt.
lettingae mal operon is most closely related to the mal <dig> orthologs.
the mal <dig> operon appears to have arisen within the thermotoga lineage either through a duplication of an ancestral mal <dig> or through a horizontal acquisition from an unknown close relative.
an examination of the genomic contexts of these mal operons suggests that a simple loss of one of the mal operons does not best explain this evolutionary history.
as shown in table  <dig>  the mal operons in f. nodosum and ts.
melanesiensis are not located in an area of the genome that has synteny with any of the other species considered here.
this genomic context analysis also supports the observation that this mal operon in tt.
lettingae belongs to the mal <dig> cluster and that mal <dig> was likely found in the ancestor of all these thermotoga species.
we found no region in the tt.
lettingae genome sequence that contains a cluster of homologs of the genes surrounding the mal <dig> operon of the other species.
consequently, a simple loss of mal <dig> from the tt.
lettingae lineage is not evident.
a duplication of mal <dig> after the divergence of tt.
lettingae would cause the mal <dig> and mal <dig> lineages to be exclusively related to one another, but that is not apparent in fig.
<dig>  consequently, mal <dig> does not appear to have arisen by a duplication of mal <dig>  rather the data indicate that mal <dig> was acquired by an ancestral thermotoga species from an unknown the thermotoga species after the divergence of tt.
lettingae.
bold, transporter orfs; italics, has at least one homolog in this region in another genome; x, an orf with no close blastp hits in the tt.
maritima genome sequence.
1note that all malf blastp searches only hit tm <dig> because tm <dig> and tm <dig> are pseudogenes in the database.
2transposase
with the exception of tt.
maritima all species examined here have intact malf <dig> genes.
tt.
maritima has a malf <dig> pseudogene.
our analyses cannot determine whether the mutations in malf2ttm occurred during laboratory cultivation of this strain or prior to its isolation from nature.
malf transmembrane topologies in the thermotogales and enteric bacteria are similar
sequence comparisons showed that the thermotogales cluster of mal <dig> and mal <dig> proteins are specifically related to those from enteric bacteria, so we sought other evidence to support this unusual evolutionary association of proteins from such different kinds of bacteria.
we examined putative structural features of the malf and malg membrane proteins by hydropathy analyses using the tmpred program  <cit> .
the malfec is a member of the cut <dig>  family  <cit>  and is one of the most extensively studied membrane permeases  <cit> .
unlike other membrane permeases, malfec is unusual in that it consists of eight transmembrane helices instead of six and has a large periplasmic domain of  <dig> amino acids between transmembrane helices  <dig> and  <dig>   <cit> .
this peculiar membrane topology is reportedly conserved in all malf homologs from bacteria closely related to e. coli  <cit> .
the function of this domain is unknown, but mutational alterations in this loop affect the localization of malkec to the membrane bound malfec  <cit> .
to determine if the malf topology found in e. coli is conserved in the malf homologs from its close relatives, including members of the thermotogales, transmembrane topological analyses of these sequences were performed.
representative data from those tmpred analyses are shown in figure  <dig> and additional file  <dig>  both malf <dig> and malf <dig> homologs from all members of the thermotogales show the eight transmembrane helices, large transmembrane loop, and abp-interaction motif found in malfec.
these unusual features support the close relationship between the thermotogales malf <dig> and malf <dig> homologs and those from e. coli relatives.
the phylogenetic analyses reported above are not influenced by the presence of this large loop since tree topologies are not changed when these loops were removed from the sequences prior to alignment .
the malf homolog from propionibacterium acnes, also related to the e. coli malf, has a smaller, but still evident, loop .
the conservation of this unique large loop in the malf permeases in these distantly related organisms is consistent with their shared evolutionary history.
interestingly the malf from deinococcus radiodurans  has a smaller loop while thermoanaerobacter tengcongensis malf  show no evidence of a loop .
whatever its function, this loop is more pronounced in close relatives of the enteric form of malf and was apparently lost from the largely gram positive clade of organisms.
the malf <dig> homologs found in some members of the thermotogales and in p. furiosus and tc.
litoralis do not contain this loop feature .
this observation supports the large evolutionary distance between the mal <dig> genes and the mal1-mal <dig> genes.
unusual domain architectures of malg in the thermotogales
the malg <dig> and malg <dig> homologs in the thermotogales are unusually large as compared to their homologs from other bacteria including e. coli .
the alignments of malg homologs showed that the c-terminal  <dig> amino acids of malg1ttm and malg2ttm are similar to the malg homologs from e. coli and related bacteria, but the n-terminal  <dig> amino acids showed no significant sequence similarity to any known proteins.
tmpred analyses revealed a large hydrophilic region of about  <dig> amino acids between transmembrane helices one and two of these malg <dig> and malg <dig> sequences .
the malg <dig> homologs lack this region, supporting their phylogenetic placement relative to mal1/mal <dig> .
discussion
members of the archaeal order thermococcales have participated in intradomain lateral transmission of abc transporter genes.
this is most clearly seen in the sharing of maltose/trehalose transporter genes  <cit> .
the genome of the bacterium tt.
maritima has a disproportionate representation of abc transporters, many of which appear to have been acquired from archaea  <cit> .
since tt.
maritima has two mal operons and lives among species of the thermococcales, we examined the evolutionary history of its mal genes to look for evidence of possible interdomain hgt.
our analyses show that the mal operons found in the currently sequenced thermococcales genomes have undergone a complex evolutionary history.
we confirmed the earlier suggestions that p. furiosus acquired its mal operon from an ancestor of tc.
litoralis and that that operon acquired its malk homolog in an ancestor of tc.
litoralis from an ancestral mal <dig> operon.
there is insufficient information to determine whether malk2an was acquired by the ancestral mal <dig> operon from another organism via hgt or by gene duplication from the same chromosome.
we found that the ancestor of the thermococcales mal genes was clearly in the bacterial lineage.
analysis of concatenations of male, malf, and malg sequences show the thermococcales mal proteins are most closely related to bacterial homologs.
in contrast, the mdx sequences cluster separately in a distant archaeal lineage.
since p. abyssi and tc.
kodakarensis do not contain a second mal operon, the mal1an genes must have been acquired in the tc.
litoralis lineage.
the ancestors of the thermococcales mal genes were acquired from a bacterial lineage relatively distant from that that gave rise to the two mal operons in tt.
maritima.
however, several other members of the thermotogales have a mal operon  that is from the same bacterial lineage as the thermococcales mal operons.
we found no evidence that this operon was directly transferred between the thermococcales and thermotogales lineages, though.
sequence comparisons cannot demonstrate the functions of these newly revealed mal operons.
investigations into the binding properties of their sbps are underway to elucidate their potential physiological roles.
the genome sequence of tt.
maritima strain msb <dig> published by the institute for genome research in  <dig> did not contain a third mal operon.
prior to that publication, in  <dig>  w. liebl deposited in genbank the sequence of a tt.
maritima strain msb <dig> gene encoding a β-glucosidase  that was contained on a cloned fragment that also contained a portion of an apparent male gene upstream of this bgla  <cit> .
neither this bgla gene nor the adjacent male appeared in the subsequent tigr genome sequence.
this suggests that after the strain was deposited in the dsmz strain collection, it may have suffered a deletion of its mal3-bgla region.
we are investigating this possibility using cultures of the type strain and the strain used for genome sequencing.
the modern thermococcales malk homologs are descended from an ancestral malk <dig>  since all the examined archaeal mal/mdx operons have a nearby malk/mdxk gene, all of which are closely related to one another, we cannot know if the ancestral mal <dig> operon inherited from the bacteria contained a malk gene or not.
despite the relatively close relationship of the thermococcales mal sequences to those of the thermotogales mal <dig> sequences, there are no obvious orthologs of the archaeal malk/mdxk in any of the thermotogales.
the membrane components of abc transporters are known to recruit different abps to effect transport, so the lack of a malk near these thermotogales operons is not unusual.
two tt.
maritima orfs, tm <dig> and tm <dig>  were identified here as potential malk homologs by phylogenetic analyses, but we did not observe up regulation of either orf in response to growth on maltose  <cit>  though there is a report that tm <dig> is expressed in response to growth on maltose  <cit> .
sequence comparisons of the thermotogales mal <dig> and mal <dig> concatenates demonstrated their close relationship to one another.
three of the examined members of the thermotogales have only one member of this family of mal operons.
gene synteny comparisons and phylogenetic analyses suggest that mal <dig> was present in the ancestor of tt.
maritima, tt.
petrophila, and tt.
neapolitana and that mal <dig> entered that ancestor by hgt from an unknown thermotoga species.
f. nodosum and ts.
melanesiensis both have a single mal operon of the mal1/mal <dig> type, but the genetic contexts of those operons are unlike those found in any of the other organisms.
their sequences do not place them uniquely with either the mal1- or mal2-type genes, a situation one might expect for ancestral-type sequences.
it will be very interesting to determine the functions of these transporters from these two species to compare them with the evolved mal <dig> and mal <dig> transporters.
the thermotogales mal <dig> and mal <dig> sequences consistently clustered in a lineage that included the mal sequences from the gamma proteobacteria.
the relationships revealed in the mal1/mal <dig> phylogeny are supported by the phylogenetic distribution of a unique secondary structure of the malf homologs.
all the malf homologs with eight transmembrane helices and a large periplasmic loop between transmembrane helices three and four are clustered in our phylogenetic analysis .
a large unique hydrophilic region in the thermotogales malg <dig> and malg <dig> proteins confirms their close evolutionary relationship with one another and indicates a relatively recent acquisition of this domain.
this region is not found in any other malg protein and its function is as yet unknown.
CONCLUSIONS
we confirmed earlier suggestions that p. furiosus acquired its mal operon from an ancestor of tc.
litoralis and that that operon acquired its malk homolog in an ancestor of tc.
litoralis from an ancestral mal <dig> operon.
our analyses show that the ancestor of the thermococcales mal genes was in the bacterial lineage while the ancestor of the mdx genes was from an archaeal lineage.
the bacterial lineage from which came the tc.
litoralis mal operon also gave rise to a newly discovered thermotogales mal operon, the third in some extant thermotoga species.
we find no evidence that the archaeal mal genes or the thermotogales mal <dig> genes were shared between these groups.
the thermotogales mal1/mal <dig> sequences consistently clustered in a lineage that included the mal sequences from the gamma proteobacteria.
the appearance of paralogous mal operons in some thermotoga species took place by acquisition of an orthologous mal <dig> operon by hgt.
the relationships among bacterial mal genes revealed in the mal1/mal <dig> phylogeny are supported by the phylogenetic distributions of unique secondary structures in the malf proteins.
the enteric bacteria and the thermotogales contain malf homologs with eight transmembrane helices and a large periplasmic loop between transmembrane helices three and four cluster.
a unique large hydrophilic region in the malg proteins from the members of the thermotogales confirms their close evolutionary relationship to one another and indicates a relatively recent acquisition of this region.

 the genome sequence of the bacterial hyperthermophile thermotoga maritima revealed evidence of extensive horizontal gene transfer with archaea. subsequent analyses of its genome sequence along with analyses of large tracts of sequences from other members of the thermotogales have supported and extended this observation. many of the genes that have been shared with archaea encode atp binding cassette transporters. although originally characterized as oligopeptide transporter genes, analysis of the substrate binding proteins encoded by these operons showed that oligosaccharides are their likely substrates. the tt. maritima genome encodes many other abc transporters. indeed, its genome encodes the second highest proportion of atp-dependent transporter genes among currently sequenced bacterial and archaeal genomes. some of the tt. maritima transporters have been experimentally shown to encode sugar binding proteins including two proteins that bind maltose. horizontal acquisition of transporter genes also occurred among the hyperthermophilic archaea. a striking example of this is the complex evolutionary history of the mal operons in the thermococcales as depicted in figure while the genomes of pyrococcus woesei, p. abyssi, p. horikoshii, and thermococcus kodakarensis all encode one mal operon, the genomes of p. furiosus and tc. litoralis each encode two. the second mal genes found in each of the latter two organisms are orthologous to the genes in the single operons of the former organisms. the mdx operon in p. furiosus encodes a maltodextrin binding protein and is upregulated in response to growth on maltose and starch. in p. furiosus, the mal operon encodes malepf, a protein that binds maltose and trehalose, but it does not appear to function as its major maltose transporter. the orthologous mal products in tc. litoralis have been extensively studied. the region encoding the mal genes are flanked by insertion sequences in both p. furiosus and tc. litoralis suggesting these genes were shared between these organisms by hgt. the similarity of the two malk homologs in tc. litoralis suggests that one of them arose by a duplication of the other. subsequently, the mal-linked malk transferred to the ancestor of p. furiosus along with the entire mal operon. this history of horizontal transfer of archaeal mal genes raises the possibility that bacterial thermophiles that live among these archaea may also have shared these maltose operons. tt. maritima was originally isolated from sediments on vulcano island, italy, the same area from which p. furiosus and tc. litoralis were isolated. hamilton-brehm, et al. speculated that because these two archaea lived together, they were more likely to exchange mal genes, so it is conceivable that bacteria living among them, like the ancestor of tt. maritima, might have acquired those genes, too. there is evidence of transfer of whole operons to the thermotoga lineage from the thermococcales. most striking, perhaps, is the horizontal transfer of the twelve-gene mbx operon encoding an nadh:ubiquinone oxidoreductase complex that is now found adjacent to the mal operon in tt. maritima. a simple blast analysis of the tt. maritima mal amino acid sequences suggested they are of bacterial origin. the two sets of tt. maritima mal genes are their closest homologs indicating a duplication event or hgt within the thermotogales lineage gave rise to one of them. other blast hits are mainly to bacterial sequences, though some archaeal sequences are also retrieved. although these data suggest the tt. maritima mal genes are of bacterial origin, no rigorous phylogenetic analysis has been published that rules out the possibility that these apparently bacterial genes originated from archaeal genes and perhaps were a part of the archaeal hgt events described above. this report provides a detailed examination of the evolutionary history of these mal genes. the tt. maritima mal genes are in two operons each containing three, collinearly transcribed genes encoding a substrate binding protein and two membrane-spanning proteins. however, the malf2ttm orf is truncated and contains an authentic frameshift mutation. a short orf precedes it. neither operon contains a gene encoding the necessary atp-binding protein that provides the energy for substrate transport. the mal1ttm operon encodes an apparent mannooligosaccharide transporter that also can bind maltose and maltotriose. the mal2ttm operon encodes a maltose and trehalose transporter. recently, genome sequence data of several other members of the thermotogales have become available. sequence data from the genomes of fervidobacterium nodosum, thermosipho melanesiensis, thermotoga petrophila, thermotoga lettingae and others are publicly available and a partial genome sequence of thermotoga neapolitana is available from the institute for genomic research. this information from other thermotogales species provides data to examine how the mal operons have evolved within this lineage and perhaps can provide evidence about the duplication event that gave rise to the two mal operons now found in tt. maritima. in this examination of the deep phylogenetic relationships among the hyperthermophiles' mal genes, we also uncovered unreported features of the thermotogales mal protein sequences that not only enlighten our understanding of their evolutionary histories, but also suggest novel structural or functional features of the transporter proteins.  evolution of the mal and mdx genes in the thermococcales previous sequence comparisons using blast analyses indicated that one mal operon transferred from an ancestor of tc. litoralis to an ancestor of p. furiosus, likely involving a transposition mediated by the insertion sequences now found in p. furiosus. based on a simple comparison of the genes encoding abps in the mal and mdx operons in tc. litoralis with their homologs in p. furiosus, a copy of an ancestral mdxk gene was postulated to have recombined downstream of the mal1an operon in an ancestor of tc. litoralis, where it now encodes the abp for the mal-encoded transporter. this ancestral mdxk could have originated from gene duplication or horizontal acquisition. we performed phylogenetic analysis of all the proteins encoded by the mal and mdx operons to test these hypotheses and to determine the origins of these evolutionarily mobile genes. the mdxepf protein sequence was used as a query for a blast search of the non-redundant protein database at ncbi. the top hits were aligned using clustalx and then used to construct neighbor joining trees. using these preliminary relationships as a guide, sequences were chosen from archaea, thermotogales species, and bacteria closely related to the archaeal sequences to represent a broad spectrum of taxa. these selected sequences were then placed in a new database. associated malf and malg protein sequences were concatenated with each male-like sequence only if these three orfs were the only orfs in an apparent abc transporter operon. these concatenated sequences were aligned and their phylogenetic relationships were examined by maximum likelihood and bayesian analyses. the tree constructed from this ml analysis is shown in figure with ml bootstrap values and bayesian posterior probabilities for each analysis placed thereon. the most obvious feature of this tree in regard to the thermococcales sequences is the independent evolution of the archaeal mal and mdx operons. the distant evolutionary relationship of these two operons is well supported. the mdx sequences cluster with strong support with those from other archaea while the mal sequences cluster separate from other archaeal sequences. the latter cluster with sequences from a variety of bacteria including cyanobacteria and members of the thermotogales. these data support the independent evolution of these two sets of genes and suggest that the mal genes found in tc. litoralis and p. furiosus were acquired from a bacterium by an ancestral member of the thermococcales. we shall discuss the relationship of these thermotogales operons to the thermococcales mal operons after considering the history of the thermococcales malk genes. evolution of the malk/mdxk genes and their thermotogales homologs the archaeal malk genes have undergone a very different evolutionary history than those in their adjoining mal operons. we examined the relationships among malk homologs using both mrbayes and phyml and both gave similar, though not identical trees, each with overall relatively weak support. however, within those trees, clusters of strong support were found and these provide reliable information about the evolutionary relationships within those clusters. as shown in the phyml-derived phylogeny in figure all the thermococcales malk and mdxk homologs group together in a well-supported clade. this supports the hypothesis that an ancestral malk2an homolog either was duplicated in an ancestral thermococcales or was horizontally acquired by that ancestor from another thermococcales. the malk2an was later transferred along with the mal1an operon to a p. furiosus ancestor. in these genomes, these malk genes are near, but not immediately adjacent to, the three-gene mal/mdx abc operons, each encoding two msps and one sbp. an amylopullulanase gene typically separates the malk homolog from the other genes, but some of these clusters have more genes in the intervening region, perhaps indicative of other hgt or deletion events in some species. since the tt. maritima mal operons do not contain adjacent malk homologs, we sought in this tree any indication of the identity of a possible thermotoga malk homolog, perhaps derived from the archaeal malk or mdxk genes. unfortunately, only two tt. maritima orfs appear in fig. among archaeal sequences and all are distantly related to the thermococcales malk/mdxk cluster. the functions of these archaeal transporters are unknown and since none of their abp or msp homologs appeared in the blast results using the p. furiosus male, malf or malg sequences as queries, they unlikely to be mal-related abps. a function of tm one of the tt. maritima orfs found in the vicinity of these archaeal sequences, has been suggested. data has indicated that it is a myo-inositol transporter's abp. the function of the other orf, tm is unknown, though its expression was reported to be upregulated when tt. maritima was grown in co-culture with methanocaldococcus jannaschii. a relatively weakly supported cluster of thermotogales orfs apparent in fig. is unrelated to any archaeal orfs. this cluster includes the tt. maritima orf tm which, based upon gene expression data, has been suggested to encode a maltose transporter abp. unfortunately this analysis does not provide additional support for that observation. it does not appear that any archaeal malk/mdxk homolog was acquired by ancestors of the currently sequenced species of thermotogales. discovery of a third mal operon in some members of the thermotogales using the p. furiosus male sequence as a query, homologs were revealed in the genome sequences from f. nodosum, ts. melanesiensis, tt. petrophila, and tt. neapolitana but not tt. maritima. each of these genomes contains complete malf and malg genes downstream from this male homolog in the order malefg. for tt. petrophila and tt. neapolitana this reveals a third apparent mal operon. ts. melanesiensis and f. nodosum have only one other mal operon, so this is a second for them. this third operon is closely more related to the mal operons of tc. litoralis and p. furiosus than are the mal and mal operons. although in that figure they may appear to be specific relatives of one another, that relationship is not strongly supported by either maximum likelihood or bayesian analyses. to examine the possibility of hgt of these mal genes between the archaea and the thermotogales, we aligned and analyzed sequences from several additional bacteria in the clade that includes mal that analysis, shown in figure does not show a specific association of the thermococcales mal sequences with these thermotogales sequences, discounting the possibility of hgt of these genes between the thermococcales and thermotogales. interestingly, the additional mal operon in tt. lettingae is not closely related to its homologs in the other members of the thermotogales. it is also not a specific relative of the archaeal mal genes. it was likely acquired from a bacterial group different than the donor to the other thermotogales. phylogenetic history of the thermotogales mal and mal genes although the tt. maritima mal paralogs are associated with sequences from enteric bacteria in the p. furiosus mdxe-derived phylogeny, the resolution of that analysis was too low to determine the detailed relationships among the bacterial orthologs. to examine the tt. maritima mal1/mal evolutionary history in detail and to determine the relationships among the mal and mal genes in the thermotogales, we used the male1ttm sequence as a query and selected from that dataset sequences from those genes that are arranged in three-gene operons as described previously. those sequences were concatenated with their malf and malg partners. the concatenated sequences from the mdxpf operon was included as an outgroup and all these concatenates were aligned using clustalx. trees were constructed using ml and bayesian analyses as above. the resulting phylogenetic tree grouped thermotogales sequences together and the relative arrangement of species in this group reflects their branching order as derived using 16s rrna gene sequence comparisons. tt. lettingae, f. nodosum, and ts. melanesiensis have only one of this type of mal operon while the remaining three thermotoga species each have two of this kind. these mal operons in f. nodosum and ts. melanesiensis are related to one another to the exclusion of those from the thermotoga species. the single tt. lettingae mal operon is most closely related to the mal orthologs. the mal operon appears to have arisen within the thermotoga lineage either through a duplication of an ancestral mal or through a horizontal acquisition from an unknown close relative. an examination of the genomic contexts of these mal operons suggests that a simple loss of one of the mal operons does not best explain this evolutionary history. as shown in table the mal operons in f. nodosum and ts. melanesiensis are not located in an area of the genome that has synteny with any of the other species considered here. this genomic context analysis also supports the observation that this mal operon in tt. lettingae belongs to the mal cluster and that mal was likely found in the ancestor of all these thermotoga species. we found no region in the tt. lettingae genome sequence that contains a cluster of homologs of the genes surrounding the mal operon of the other species. consequently, a simple loss of mal from the tt. lettingae lineage is not evident. a duplication of mal after the divergence of tt. lettingae would cause the mal and mal lineages to be exclusively related to one another, but that is not apparent in fig. consequently, mal does not appear to have arisen by a duplication of mal rather the data indicate that mal was acquired by an ancestral thermotoga species from an unknown the thermotoga species after the divergence of tt. lettingae. bold, transporter orfs; italics, has at least one homolog in this region in another genome; x, an orf with no close blastp hits in the tt. maritima genome sequence. 1note that all malf blastp searches only hit tm because tm and tm are pseudogenes in the database. 2transposase with the exception of tt. maritima all species examined here have intact malf genes. tt. maritima has a malf pseudogene. our analyses cannot determine whether the mutations in malf2ttm occurred during laboratory cultivation of this strain or prior to its isolation from nature. malf transmembrane topologies in the thermotogales and enteric bacteria are similar sequence comparisons showed that the thermotogales cluster of mal and mal proteins are specifically related to those from enteric bacteria, so we sought other evidence to support this unusual evolutionary association of proteins from such different kinds of bacteria. we examined putative structural features of the malf and malg membrane proteins by hydropathy analyses using the tmpred program. the malfec is a member of the cut family and is one of the most extensively studied membrane permeases. unlike other membrane permeases, malfec is unusual in that it consists of eight transmembrane helices instead of six and has a large periplasmic domain of amino acids between transmembrane helices and. this peculiar membrane topology is reportedly conserved in all malf homologs from bacteria closely related to e. coli. the function of this domain is unknown, but mutational alterations in this loop affect the localization of malkec to the membrane bound malfec. to determine if the malf topology found in e. coli is conserved in the malf homologs from its close relatives, including members of the thermotogales, transmembrane topological analyses of these sequences were performed. representative data from those tmpred analyses are shown in figure and additional file both malf and malf homologs from all members of the thermotogales show the eight transmembrane helices, large transmembrane loop, and abp-interaction motif found in malfec. these unusual features support the close relationship between the thermotogales malf and malf homologs and those from e. coli relatives. the phylogenetic analyses reported above are not influenced by the presence of this large loop since tree topologies are not changed when these loops were removed from the sequences prior to alignment. the malf homolog from propionibacterium acnes, also related to the e. coli malf, has a smaller, but still evident, loop. the conservation of this unique large loop in the malf permeases in these distantly related organisms is consistent with their shared evolutionary history. interestingly the malf from deinococcus radiodurans has a smaller loop while thermoanaerobacter tengcongensis malf show no evidence of a loop. whatever its function, this loop is more pronounced in close relatives of the enteric form of malf and was apparently lost from the largely gram positive clade of organisms. the malf homologs found in some members of the thermotogales and in p. furiosus and tc. litoralis do not contain this loop feature. this observation supports the large evolutionary distance between the mal genes and the mal1-mal genes. unusual domain architectures of malg in the thermotogales the malg and malg homologs in the thermotogales are unusually large as compared to their homologs from other bacteria including e. coli. the alignments of malg homologs showed that the c-terminal amino acids of malg1ttm and malg2ttm are similar to the malg homologs from e. coli and related bacteria, but the n-terminal amino acids showed no significant sequence similarity to any known proteins. tmpred analyses revealed a large hydrophilic region of about amino acids between transmembrane helices one and two of these malg and malg sequences. the malg homologs lack this region, supporting their phylogenetic placement relative to mal1/mal. discussion members of the archaeal order thermococcales have participated in intradomain lateral transmission of abc transporter genes. this is most clearly seen in the sharing of maltose/trehalose transporter genes. the genome of the bacterium tt. maritima has a disproportionate representation of abc transporters, many of which appear to have been acquired from archaea. since tt. maritima has two mal operons and lives among species of the thermococcales, we examined the evolutionary history of its mal genes to look for evidence of possible interdomain hgt. our analyses show that the mal operons found in the currently sequenced thermococcales genomes have undergone a complex evolutionary history. we confirmed the earlier suggestions that p. furiosus acquired its mal operon from an ancestor of tc. litoralis and that that operon acquired its malk homolog in an ancestor of tc. litoralis from an ancestral mal operon. there is insufficient information to determine whether malk2an was acquired by the ancestral mal operon from another organism via hgt or by gene duplication from the same chromosome. we found that the ancestor of the thermococcales mal genes was clearly in the bacterial lineage. analysis of concatenations of male, malf, and malg sequences show the thermococcales mal proteins are most closely related to bacterial homologs. in contrast, the mdx sequences cluster separately in a distant archaeal lineage. since p. abyssi and tc. kodakarensis do not contain a second mal operon, the mal1an genes must have been acquired in the tc. litoralis lineage. the ancestors of the thermococcales mal genes were acquired from a bacterial lineage relatively distant from that that gave rise to the two mal operons in tt. maritima. however, several other members of the thermotogales have a mal operon that is from the same bacterial lineage as the thermococcales mal operons. we found no evidence that this operon was directly transferred between the thermococcales and thermotogales lineages, though. sequence comparisons cannot demonstrate the functions of these newly revealed mal operons. investigations into the binding properties of their sbps are underway to elucidate their potential physiological roles. the genome sequence of tt. maritima strain msb published by the institute for genome research in did not contain a third mal operon. prior to that publication, in w. liebl deposited in genbank the sequence of a tt. maritima strain msb gene encoding a β-glucosidase that was contained on a cloned fragment that also contained a portion of an apparent male gene upstream of this bgla. neither this bgla gene nor the adjacent male appeared in the subsequent tigr genome sequence. this suggests that after the strain was deposited in the dsmz strain collection, it may have suffered a deletion of its mal3-bgla region. we are investigating this possibility using cultures of the type strain and the strain used for genome sequencing. the modern thermococcales malk homologs are descended from an ancestral malk since all the examined archaeal mal/mdx operons have a nearby malk/mdxk gene, all of which are closely related to one another, we cannot know if the ancestral mal operon inherited from the bacteria contained a malk gene or not. despite the relatively close relationship of the thermococcales mal sequences to those of the thermotogales mal sequences, there are no obvious orthologs of the archaeal malk/mdxk in any of the thermotogales. the membrane components of abc transporters are known to recruit different abps to effect transport, so the lack of a malk near these thermotogales operons is not unusual. two tt. maritima orfs, tm and tm were identified here as potential malk homologs by phylogenetic analyses, but we did not observe up regulation of either orf in response to growth on maltose though there is a report that tm is expressed in response to growth on maltose. sequence comparisons of the thermotogales mal and mal concatenates demonstrated their close relationship to one another. three of the examined members of the thermotogales have only one member of this family of mal operons. gene synteny comparisons and phylogenetic analyses suggest that mal was present in the ancestor of tt. maritima, tt. petrophila, and tt. neapolitana and that mal entered that ancestor by hgt from an unknown thermotoga species. f. nodosum and ts. melanesiensis both have a single mal operon of the mal1/mal type, but the genetic contexts of those operons are unlike those found in any of the other organisms. their sequences do not place them uniquely with either the mal1- or mal2-type genes, a situation one might expect for ancestral-type sequences. it will be very interesting to determine the functions of these transporters from these two species to compare them with the evolved mal and mal transporters. the thermotogales mal and mal sequences consistently clustered in a lineage that included the mal sequences from the gamma proteobacteria. the relationships revealed in the mal1/mal phylogeny are supported by the phylogenetic distribution of a unique secondary structure of the malf homologs. all the malf homologs with eight transmembrane helices and a large periplasmic loop between transmembrane helices three and four are clustered in our phylogenetic analysis. a large unique hydrophilic region in the thermotogales malg and malg proteins confirms their close evolutionary relationship with one another and indicates a relatively recent acquisition of this domain. this region is not found in any other malg protein and its function is as yet unknown.  we confirmed earlier suggestions that p. furiosus acquired its mal operon from an ancestor of tc. litoralis and that that operon acquired its malk homolog in an ancestor of tc. litoralis from an ancestral mal operon. our analyses show that the ancestor of the thermococcales mal genes was in the bacterial lineage while the ancestor of the mdx genes was from an archaeal lineage. the bacterial lineage from which came the tc. litoralis mal operon also gave rise to a newly discovered thermotogales mal operon, the third in some extant thermotoga species. we find no evidence that the archaeal mal genes or the thermotogales mal genes were shared between these groups. the thermotogales mal1/mal sequences consistently clustered in a lineage that included the mal sequences from the gamma proteobacteria. the appearance of paralogous mal operons in some thermotoga species took place by acquisition of an orthologous mal operon by hgt. the relationships among bacterial mal genes revealed in the mal1/mal phylogeny are supported by the phylogenetic distributions of unique secondary structures in the malf proteins. the enteric bacteria and the thermotogales contain malf homologs with eight transmembrane helices and a large periplasmic loop between transmembrane helices three and four cluster. a unique large hydrophilic region in the malg proteins from the members of the thermotogales confirms their close evolutionary relationship to one another and indicates a relatively recent acquisition of this region. 
litoralis and p. furiosus mdx maltodextrin transporter operons arose in the archaea while their mal maltose transporter operons arose in a bacterial lineage, but not the same lineage as the two maltose transporter operons found in the published tt. analyses of genome sequence data from other thermotogales species, fervidobacterium nodosum, thermosipho melanesiensis, thermotoga petrophila, thermotoga lettingae, and thermotoga neapolitana, revealed a third apparent mal operon, absent from the published genome sequence of tt. other thermotogales species have a third mal operon that is more closely related to the bacterial thermococcales mal operons, but the data do not support a recent horizontal sharing of that operon between these groups. the mal genes that encode maltose transporters have undergone extensive lateral transfer among ancestors of the archaea thermococcus litoralis and pyrococcus furiosus. we examined deep phylogenetic relationships among the mal genes of these hyperthermophiles and their close relatives to look for evidence of shared ancestry. litoralis and p. furiosus mal genes are most closely related to bacterial mal genes while their respective mdx genes are archaeal. they are highly similar to one another and belong to a phylogenetic lineage that includes mal genes from the enteric bacteria. maritima strain msb this third operon, mal is more closely related to the thermococcales' bacteria-derived mal genes than are mal and mal f. nodosum, ts. maritima maltose transporters are phylogenetically and structurally similar to those found in enteric bacteria and the mal operon was horizontally transferred within the thermotoga lineage. the genome sequence of thermotoga maritima bears evidence of extensive acquisition of archaeal genes, so its ancestors clearly had the capacity to do so. the genes of the two mal operons in tt. litoralis and p. furiosus are not closely related to one another. the mal operon from an unknown species of thermotoga appears to have been horizontally acquired by a thermotoga species that had only mal 
 the mal genes that encode maltose transporters have undergone extensive lateral transfer among ancestors of the archaea thermococcus litoralis and pyrococcus furiosus. bacterial hyperthermophiles of the order thermotogales live among these archaea and so may have shared in these transfers. the genome sequence of thermotoga maritima bears evidence of extensive acquisition of archaeal genes, so its ancestors clearly had the capacity to do so. we examined deep phylogenetic relationships among the mal genes of these hyperthermophiles and their close relatives to look for evidence of shared ancestry.  we demonstrate that the two maltose atp binding cassette transporter operons now found in tc. litoralis and p. furiosus are not closely related to one another. the tc. litoralis and p. furiosus mal genes are most closely related to bacterial mal genes while their respective mdx genes are archaeal. the genes of the two mal operons in tt. maritima are not related to genes in either of these archaeal operons. they are highly similar to one another and belong to a phylogenetic lineage that includes mal genes from the enteric bacteria. a unique domain of the enteric malf membrane spanning proteins found also in these thermotogales malf homologs supports their relatively close relationship with these enteric proteins. analyses of genome sequence data from other thermotogales species, fervidobacterium nodosum, thermosipho melanesiensis, thermotoga petrophila, thermotoga lettingae, and thermotoga neapolitana, revealed a third apparent mal operon, absent from the published genome sequence of tt. maritima strain msb this third operon, mal is more closely related to the thermococcales' bacteria-derived mal genes than are mal and mal f. nodosum, ts. melanesiensis, and tt. lettingae have only one of the mal1-mal paralogs. the mal operon from an unknown species of thermotoga appears to have been horizontally acquired by a thermotoga species that had only mal  these data demonstrate that the tc. litoralis and p. furiosus mdx maltodextrin transporter operons arose in the archaea while their mal maltose transporter operons arose in a bacterial lineage, but not the same lineage as the two maltose transporter operons found in the published tt. maritima genome sequence. these tt. maritima maltose transporters are phylogenetically and structurally similar to those found in enteric bacteria and the mal operon was horizontally transferred within the thermotoga lineage. other thermotogales species have a third mal operon that is more closely related to the bacterial thermococcales mal operons, but the data do not support a recent horizontal sharing of that operon between these groups. 