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171

Review
On the origin of mitochondria and Rickettsia-related eukaryotic endosymbionts
B. Franz Lang1*, Henner Brinkmann1, Liisa B. Koski1, Masahiro Fujishima2, Hans-Dieter Görtz3
and Gertraud Burger1

1

Program in Evolutionary Biology, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research; Centre Robert
Cedergren, Département de Biochimie, Université de Montréal, 2900 Boulevard EdouardMontpetit, Montréal, Québec, H3T 1J4, Canada.
2
Biological Institute, Faculty of Science, Yamaguchi University, Yamaguchi 753-8512, Japan.
3
Abteilung Zoologie, Biologisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57, 70550
Stuttgart, Germany.

SUMMARY
Resent insights into the origin and early evolution of mitochondria come from two approaches:
the investigation of mtDNAs from minimally derived (primitive) mitochondriate eukaryotes, inparticular jakobid flagellates, and of genomes fromintracellular α-proteobacterial symbionts. Of particular interest in this context is Holospora obtusa,
an intracellular bacterial endosymbiont that resides
and replicates in the somatic nucleus of its eukaryotic host, the ciliate Paramecium caudatum.
Currently we have sequenced close to 50% of the~ 1.7 Mbp H. obtusa genome, revealing the ab-*Corresponding author
E-mail: Franz.Lang@Umontreal.ca
Received: 28 June 2005.

sence of genes for oxidative phosphorylation, theTCA cycle, and many other metabolic pathways,
but the presence of several pathogenesis-related
genes and a high number of bacterial IS elements.
Phylogenetic analyses with multiple protein sequences place H. obtusa basally to the RickettsiaEhrlichia-Wolbachia assemblage of bacterial
pathogens. This leads us to postulate that H. obtusa is the closest bacterial relative of mitochondria known to date.

INTRODUCTION
One of the major advancements in understanding eukaryotic evolution was the discovery
that mitochondria evolved from an endosymbiotic
α-Proteobacterium, and that mitochondrial DNA(mtDNA) is a relict bacterial genome. Most
mtDNAs have lost earmarks of their bacterial origin, with a notable exception in jakobid flagellates

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Table 1: Biological processes in mitochondria 1
DNA replication, recombination and repair
Transcription2 (a phage-like RNA polymerase, except in jakobid flagellates using an α2ββ’σ polymerase3)
RNA processing (including RNA editing and intron splicing)Translation (rRNAs, tRNAs and ribosomal proteins, EFTU3 and tmRNAs3)
Protein and RNA translocation (Tom, Tim, Tob, Tat (tatA3, tatC), Sec3, Oxa1, and VDAC translocases)
Mitochondrial carriers (translocators of ADP/ATP, co-factors, metabolites, substrates, etc.)
Chaperones
Mitochondrial morphology and division
Proteases
Nucleases
Electron transport and ATP synthesis
Lipid metabolism
Nucleotide metabolism
Amino acid metabolism
Carbohydrate metabolism
Fe-S biosynthesis and export
Heme biosynthesis
Ubiquinone biosynthesis
Enzyme cofactor biosynthesis
1

Note that some pathways serve mitochondria-specific functions only, whereas others supply the whole cell.
Processes in bold involve mtDNA-encoded components.
3
MtDNA-encoded only in Reclinomonas americana (Lang et al. 1997; Jacob et al. 2004).
For a compilation of genes from completely sequenced mtDNAs see GOBASE at http://amoebidia.bcm.umontreal.ca/pggobase/searches/compilations.php
2(Lang et al. 1997; Jacob et al. 2004). According tocurrent estimates, mitochondria were acquired
more than one billion years ago, which makes inferences of early steps in mitochondrial evolution a
non-trivial problem. Not surprisingly, the nature of
the partners implicated in mitochondrial endosymbiosis, the driving forces and timing of their fusion, and initial stages of reductive mitochondrial
genome evolution, remain vague.
Contemporary mtDNAs have retained only 5– 100 from the original set of several hundred toseveral thousand genes residing in bacterial genomes. One portion of these genes was lost in the
proto-mitochondrial genome, another one has mi-

grated to the nucleus during early steps of endosymbiosis. The total number of nuclear genes thatare involved in mitochondrial biogenesis has been
estimated at 700-800 proteins in yeast (see Table 1
for biological processes in which mitochondria ofyeast and other eukaryotes are involved). Thisestimate is based on mass spectrometry of proteinsfrom isolated mitochondria (Sickmann et al. 2003)
and sub-cellular localization studies (Kumar et al.
2002; Huh et al. 2003), combined with genomic
approaches (Prokisch et al. 2004). However, thesenumbers come with a high degree of imprecision(Reichert and Neupert 2004). In addition, only asmall fraction of yeast mitochondrial proteins can

Jpn. J. Protozool. Vol. 38, No. 2. (2005)

be placed with confidence in phylogenetic analyses; consequently, it remains unknown how manyof the nucleus-encoded mitochondrial proteinsderive from the α-proteobacterial ancestor, theeukaryotic host, or other sources (Burger and Lang
2003).
To address the question of mitochondrial origins, we have begun to investigate the genome of
the bacterium Holospora obtusa, an endosymbiontof the ciliate Paramecium caudatum (Görtz et al.
1990). The objective of our study is to conduct
genome comparisons between intracellular versus
free-living bacteria on one hand, and endosymbiotic bacteria versus organelles on the other.
In the present review, we will give a brief update on the diversity of mitochondrial genomes
across eukaryotes and discuss the early evolutionary events that led to the establishment of mitochondria. Then, we will present a preliminary
analysis of the Holospora obtusa genome sequence, and conclude with a phylogenetic analysisof this species.
Distribution of mitochondria across eukaryotes
Not all eukaryotes contain mitochondria. Exceptions, although rare, are species that live inanoxic environments, such as Trichomonas(parabasalids), Giardia and Hexamita (diplomonads), Entamoeba and Mastigamoeba (pelobionts), Retortamonas (retortamonads), Microsporidia (fungi) and Neocallimastix (fungi). Several of these species have most likely lost functional mitochondria secondarily rather than being
primitively amitochondriate, because they contain
nucleus-encoded genes that are most likely of mitochondrial origin (e.g., the ADP/ATP carrier (vander Giezen et al. 2002; Voncken et al. 2002) andthe 60 and 70 kDa heat-shock proteins (van derGiezen et al. 2003)). In addition, a growing number of amitochondriate eukaryotes are reported tocontain organelles (hydrogenosomes, cryptosomesor mitosomes), which are believed to be derived

173

Figure 1: Genome size and coding content of mitochondria and Rickettsia. Circles and lines represent
circular and linear genome shapes, respectively. For
genomes >60 kbp, the portion coding for genes withknown function (red) is distinguished from that including intergenic regions and ORFs (purple).

from mitochondria because they import the proteins mentioned above (Williams and Keeling2003). Taken together, this raises the possibility
that eukaryotes without mitochondria may never
have existed. Alternatively, their descendants
might have not survived the increase of oxygen
concentration on Earth that was due to the emergence and proliferation of photosynthetic eukaryotes.
Typical features of mitochondrial genomes – abrief overview
The more mitochondrial genetic systems areanalyzed, the less holds the concept of a 'typical'
mtDNA. Even so, certain features are frequently
found across a broad taxonomical range of eukaryotes, as briefly summarized in the following(for more details and references, see (Gray et al.
1998; Lang et al. 1999; Gray et al. 2004)).
A+T content. With few exceptions, mitochondrial
genomes feature a high A+T content (60-80%,
compared to nuclear) a property often used for174

Mitochondrial origins

Figure 2: Mitochondrial genomes from diverse eukaryotic groups. Genetic maps of mtDNAs (see also (O'Brien etal. 2003) and http://amoebidia.bcm.umontreal.ca/pg-gobase/searches/map.php) from an animal (Anderson et al.
1981), a fungus (Forget et al. 2002) and three protists (Burger et al. 1995; Lang et al. 1997; Lang et al. 2002), demonstrating the wide range of coding capacity and organization (the mtDNA of Hyaloraphidium although linear, isdepicted as a circle to facilitate comparisons). Black rectangles, identified genes; grey rectangles, ORFs; white rectangles with grey-shaded sections, introns and intronic open reading frames; rectangles on outer/inner ring, transcription is clockwise/counterclockwise. Gene names in black belong to the basic gene complement common to animal mtDNAs; green, ORFs; blue, extra genes present in various protists and plants; red, extra genes specific to jakobid flagellates.

Jpn. J. Protozool. Vol. 38, No. 2. (2005)

physically separating mtDNA from other DNAs
within an organism.
Size. The medium size of mtDNA is ~50 kbp,
which corresponds to ~1% of the typical size of an
α-proteobacterial genome from which it is derived.
Yet deviations from the medium size by an orderof magnitude are quite common (Fig. 1). With
only 6 kbp, the mtDNA of the primate and birdparasite Plasmodium is the smallest known, while
the largest ones occur in land plants, measuringfrom 180 to 2,400 kbp (Ward et al. 1981).
Shape. MtDNA molecules (referred to in the following as chromosomes) come in three major topologies (for a review, see (Bendich 1996)). In
most organisms, mitochondrial chromosomes are
circular-mapping but linear in structure, made up
of several tandemly concatenated copies. True(monomeric) circular or linear mtDNAs have beenshown to occur in only a limited number of phylogenetically disparate taxa such as fungi, vertebrates and Euglenozoa (e.g., (Forget et al. 2002;
Nosek and Tomaska 2003; Marande et al. 2005)
and references therein).
Chromosome number and ploidy. Mitochondrial
DNA typically consists of a single kind of molecule in numerous copies, ranging from ~10 to~1000 per cell, i.e., a dozen or more per organelle
and often more than one organelle per cell.
Gene content. Invariantly, mtDNA-encoded components participate in processes that take place inmitochondria, including respiration, oxidative
phosphorylation and translation; less frequently inprotein import/maturation and RNA processing,and rarely in transcription (Table 1, Fig. 2). Again,at the extremes are Plasmodium and its relatives
with as few as five genes (three of which code forproteins and two for rRNAs), and jakobid flagellates with nearly 100 genes (including 70 proteinsand 25-26 tRNAs). The number of mtDNAencoded tRNAs is most variable across eukaryotes(0 to >30). The reason for the up to 20-fold difference in mitochondrial gene content is variation in175

the extent of gene migration to the nucleus (Adams
and Palmer 2003; Burger and Lang 2003).
The most bacteria-like mtDNA is found in Reclinomonas americana
In past years, the eubacterial ancestry of mitochondria has become strikingly obvious throughthe study of minimally derived protists, such as therecently recognized jakobid flagellate Reclinomonas americana (Lang et al. 1997) (Fig. 2). Amongthe most eubacteria-like features of jakobid
mtDNAs are putative ribosome binding motifs(Shine-Dalgarno sequences) upstream of proteincoding genes, multi-subunit RNA polymerase,
Sec-dependent protein import, transfer messenger
RNA (tmRNA) involved in the release of stalledribosomes, and the elongation factor Tu (Lang etal. 1997; Jacob et al. 2004). Neither of these has
been found so far in mtDNAs of other eukaryotes.
Mitochondrial versus bacterial genomes
Genomes of free-living bacteria usually contain several thousand genes, compared to only ~500 to 1000 in endosymbiotic bacteria. For example, in the obligatory pathogen Haemophilus influenza, the causative agent of meningitis, 636 genes
could be assigned to a function and a further 363
are predicted to code for proteins of unknown
function (TIGR http://pohh.phy.ncu.edi/tw/cdy/USS/). The gene content of mitochondrial genomes is yet an order of magnitude smaller thanthose of pathogenic/endosymbiotic bacteria. Completely absent from mtDNAs are genes involved inseveral basic cellular processes such as DNA replication, recombination, motility, metabolism, andsignal transduction (Fig. 2, Table 1).
As discussed in detail elsewhere (see (Burger
and Lang 2003) and references therein), gene loss
and elevated genomic A+T content in bacteria
appear to progress concurrently with the transition
from a free-living to an intracellular lifestyle. Interestingly, the trends of genome evolution associ-176

Mitochondrial origins

ated with intracellularity are shared by bacterial
pathogens of different phylogenetic affiliation: αProteobacteria (Rickettsia, Wolbachia, Ehrlichia),
β-Proteobacteria (Neisseria), γ-Proteobacteria(Haemophilus, Buchnera, Wigglesworthia), Firmicutes (Mycoplasma), the Chlamydia group, andSpirochetes (Borrelia). Obviously, by adapting to
intracellular environments, these organisms haveundergone convergent evolution. A similar convergence is found in mitochondria and plastids.
Do mitochondria originate from endosymbiotic
or free-living α-Proteobacteria?
Phylogenetic analyses provide clear evidence
that mitochondria originated from within α-Proteobacteria (e.g., (Andersson et al. 1998; Burger et al.
1999)), a bacterial assemblage that includes freeliving species such as Magnetospirillum andRhodobacter, facultative symbionts/pathogens ofplants such as Rhizobium and Agrobacter, andintracellular obligatory animal pathogens of the
Rickettsia group including the causative agents of
typhus and spotted fever. However, phylogenetic
reconstructions, even when including mitochondrial data from the minimally derived jakobids, do
not resolve with confidence which of these αproteobacterial groups is most closely related tomitochondria. To address this question with abroader dataset, we began sequencing the genomeof the α-proteobacterial Holospora obtusa, an intracellular endosymbiont of the ciliate Paramecium caudatum. In the following, we briefly describe this bacterium, its life style and genome,
before going on to revisit the ancestry of mitochondria using these new data.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The highly reduced genome of the endosymbiotic bacterium Holospora obtusa

Ciliates harbor a variety of bacteria that enter
their host via the food vacuole. Some of these bacterial species further invade the cytoplasm as wellas the micro- and the macronucleus where they
reside and reproduce. About 200 ciliate species
have been recorded to host intracellular bacteria;
the Paramecium genus alone harbors close to 60
different bacterial taxa (reviewed in (Fokin et al.
2004)).
The specific host of Holospora obtusa is theciliate Paramecium caudatum, on which the bacterium depends for propagation. Previous studies
have uncovered the complex life cycle of
Holospora, including the invasion of the somatic(macro-) nucleus and its interactions with andmodulation of the host’s subcellular structures
upon infection (Görtz et al. 1990). In the course oftransition from the infectious to the reproductive
bacterial form, patterns of protein expression
change considerably. So far, more than 20 bacterial proteins that are specifically involved in infection have been characterized by immunologicalmethods and N-terminal microsequencing (e.g.,(Görtz et al. 1990; Wiemann and Görtz 1991;
Dohra et al. 1997; Dohra et al. 1998; Nakamura etal. 2004); Fujishima and Görtz, unpublished results).
We have decided to sequence the complete
genome of Holospora for two reasons, (i) to facilitate identification of genes implicated in infectionand (ii) to revisit the question about the phylogenetic position of this endosymbiont. At the time ofwriting, we have sequenced close to 50% of the
1.7 mbp genome size estimated by Timofeyeva
AS, Rautian M and Görtz HD (unpublished). With
an A+T-content of ~ 65%, the Holospora genome
size is only moderately A+T rich, compared toother endosymbiotic bacteria, which have A+T
contents up to 75% (reviewed in (Wernegreen2002)).
As of now, more than 353 genes have been
identified in the Holospora genome, includingJpn. J. Protozool. Vol. 38, No. 2. (2005)~200 genes of known function (coding for 181
distinct proteins and 18 structural RNAs). The
remaining ~150 hypothetical proteins (ORFs) haveno recognizable counterparts in other organisms.
The majority of assigned genes participate in basic
cellular processes (replication and repair, transcription and translation, ATP synthesis), a wide varietyof transport functions (ABC transporters) and a
few metabolic pathways (e.g., lipid, heme, glucan,
nucleotide and alanine biosynthesis). Most pathways considered essential for autotrophy appear to
be completely missing, except, curiously, biotin
synthesis (note that biotin synthesis is lacking in
Rickettsia). We speculate that the provision of
biotin constitutes one of the benefits that Paramecium receives from its association with Holospora.
Other potential benefits for the host cell are longer
survival of infected Paramecium at low temperatures (10 ºC) and longer survival and increased cell
motility at 37 ºC, which has been associated withover-expression of Hsp70 and/or GroEL (Hori andFujishima 2003; Fujishima et al. 2005).
Intriguingly, we found in the Holospora genome no genes for respiratory chain complexes,
which in aerobic organisms serve to drive efficient
ATP synthesis via oxidative phosphorylation. It
appears that Holospora relies on ‘energy parasitism’ by ATP import via its ADP/ATP transporter
system (Linka et al. 2003). This feature distinguishes Holospora from Rickettsia and its relatives
who have retained the oxidative phosphorylation
system (e.g., (Andersson et al. 1998; Renesto et al.
2005)), as well as the TCA cycle and the glycolysis III pathway (pyruvate → acetate). The loss of
respiration and oxidative phosphorylation in
Holospora is not surprising, given that this endosymbiont resides and reproduces in the host’s nucleus where oxygen supply is limited.
We have discovered additional genes in the
Holospora genome whose products play a role inhost invasion and interact with the host’s subcellular components (Fujishima M, Görtz HD, Lang BF

177

and Burger G, unpublished). These genes code forcomponents of the general secretion pathway, lipoprotein carriers, and permeases. The Holospora
genome also contains a class of ~ 40 nearly identical insertion elements (classified as transposase_11; pfam01609) that are most similar tocounterparts in Legionella pneumophila ((Chien etal. 2004); locus CAH17112)) and Francisella tularensis ((Larsson et al. 2005); locus
YP_169173)). Finally, we identified numerous
other repeat elements, some of which have similarities to transposase-containing IS sequences ofbacteria, and others that appear to be Holosporaspecific.
Holospora obtusa is only distantly related to
Rickettsiales
Initial phylogenetic analyses with small subunit rRNA (SSU-rRNA) sequences affiliatedHolospora obtusa with Caedibacter caryophila(another Paramecium endosymbiont; (Springer etal. 1993)), which together emerge from within the
Rickettsia lineage of α-Proteobacteria (e.g.,(Springer et al. 1993; Gray and Spencer 1996;
Horn et al. 1999)). However, these results have to
be met with reservations because the statisticalsupport for this placement with SSU-rRNA data is
non-significant (< 95% bootstrap support; likelihood ratio tests were not performed). In addition,
the clustering of Rickettsia- and Holosporarelatives may be solely due to their elevated A+T
content, contrasting with the low A+T content of
free-living α-Proteobacteria. Nucleotide sequence
datasets of highly unbalanced A+T content are
known to be prone to a strong phylogenetic artifact, whose effect is similar to that caused by unequal evolutionary rates known as long-branch
attraction (Felsenstein 1978). In fact, long-branch
attraction is itself a major concern, as all symbiotic/pathogenic bacteria have highly accelerated
evolutionary rates as a consequence of their adaptation to an intracellular life style. In combination,

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Mitochondrial origins
Figure 3: Phylogenetic relationship ofHolospora to other α-Proteobacteria
The analysis is based on a concatenateddataset of bacterial proteins. The tree has
been inferred using PhyML and the
WAG+F+Γ model. Numbers at branches
represent support values obtained with 100
bootstrap replicates. The scale bar denotes
the estimated number of amino acid substitutions per site. The four eubacterial subdivisions (α, β, γ, δ) are indicated. For more
information on the selection of sequences
and the phylogenetic methodology used,see (Rodríguez-Ezpeleta et al. 2005).

the effect of A+T bias plus long-branch attraction
might be strong enough to regroup Holospora with
Rickettsiales in a positively misleading way.
Under such circumstances, it is advisable toemploy phylogenetic approaches that are leastsensitive to long-branch attraction (such as likelihood methods; (Delsuc et al. 2005)), and to use
deduced protein rather than nucleotide sequences,in order to reduce the impact of A+T bias. More-over, the analysis of multiple protein sequences
helps to overcome the problem of non-significant
statistical support, as does the application of themost realistic evolutionary models (e.g., an appropriate amino acid substitution matrix; among-site
variation of evolutionary rates modeled by agamma distribution).
Lateral (or horizontal) gene transfer is anotherpotential problem in bacterial phylogeny

Jpn. J. Protozool. Vol. 38, No. 2. (2005)

179(Zhaxybayeva et al. 2004). Yet, a core of genesthat generally code for essential proteins, and thatare subunits of large complexes, are less likely
affected by transfers (Brochier et al. 2002). These
are the genes that we chose for the present analysis.
Fig. 3 shows a phylogenetic tree based on
6,109 amino acid positions from 18 genes. The
proteobacterial relationships are resolved withsignificant support at all branches (except for ashort internal branch in the γ subdivision). The
impact of LGT seems negligible, because in multiprotein phylogenies, tree resolution and support
values are expected to disappear with increasing
horizontal gene transfer. In contrast to the results
obtained with SSU-rRNA data mentioned above,
H. obtusa branches in our protein-based analysis
clearly outside the Rickettsia-Wolbachia-Ehrlichia
lineage of bacterial pathogens.

and somewhat closer to the latter two species thanto Rickettsia. Superimposition of the bacterial tree
shown in Fig. 3 with our bacterial/mitochondrial
trees predicts that H. obtusa is closer to the mitochondrial divergence point than all other bacterial
pathogens.
To test this prediction, a gene set will be required which is shared by H. obtusa and mitochondria, for instance nuclear-encoded mitochondrial
proteins with counterparts in Holospora, such as
ribosomal proteins, translation factors and chaperons. Work is in progress by the Canada-wide collaborative Protist EST Program (PEP; http://amoebidia.bcm.umontreal.ca/public/pepdb/
agrm.php), to determine the expressed portion of
nuclear genomes from a broad range of protists.
These data will be instrumental for resolving thequestion whether Holospora is indeed the closest
bacterial relative of mitochondria.

Divergence point of mitochondria within αProteobacteria
Several studies by others suggest that mitochondria are specifically associated with
Rickettsiales, or even emerged from within the
Rickettsia lineage (e.g., (Gray and Spencer 1996;
Andersson et al. 1998; Sicheritz-Ponten et al.
1998)). These conjectures need to be consideredwith caution because the corresponding analyses
suffer from non-significant statistical support due
to limited sequence data, or insufficient taxon sampling. We previously inferred phylogenies basedon an extended set of mtDNA-encoded proteins(up to 13) that are highly conserved and present inmost eukaryotic lineages, providing a total of ~3,000 amino acid positions (e.g., (Forget et al.
2002; Lang et al. 2002; Bullerwell et al. 2003a;
Bullerwell et al. 2003b)). When including in thisdata set sequences from several α-proteobacteria
but not Holospora (because it lacks the corresponding proteins), mitochondria branch between
Rickettsia and Sinorhizobium/Magnetospirillum

CONCLUSIONS
Our preliminary analyses of the H. obtusa
genome show that α-proteobacterial endosymbionts represent an unexpected broad diversity, bothphylogenetically and metabolically. The complete
genome sequence of H. obtusa and its relatives
such as Caedibacter will not only be key to better
understanding eukaryotic host – pathogen interactions. These bacterial genome data, in combination
with EST data from minimally derived eukaryotes,
also promise to provide insight into the early history of mitochondrial endosymbiosis.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank M. Nickel, Y. Jacob and D.
Tremblay for participation in H. obtusa genome
sequencing, and L. Forget and Z. Wang for excellent technical assistance. This project was supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes for
Health Research (MOP-42475, GX-15331), and by
Genome Quebec and Genome Canada. Salary and180

Mitochondrial origins

interaction support from the Canadian Institute forAdvanced Research (BFL and GB) is gratefully
acknowledged.

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