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. 2010 May;3(3):227-30.
doi: 10.4161/cib.3.3.11185.

Evolutionary conservation of the WASH complex, an actin polymerization machine involved in endosomal fission

Emmanuel Derivery  1 , Alexis Gautreau
Affiliations

Evolutionary conservation of the WASH complex, an actin polymerization machine involved in endosomal fission

Emmanuel Derivery et al. Commun Integr Biol. 2010 May.

Abstract

WASH is the Arp2/3 activating protein that is localized at the surface of endosomes, where it induces the formation of branched actin networks. This activity of WASH favors, in collaboration with dynamin, the fission of transport intermediates from endosomes, and hence regulates endosomal trafficking of several cargos. We have purified a novel stable multiprotein complex containing WASH, the WASH complex, and we examine here the evolutionary conservation of its seven subunits across diverse eukaryotic phyla. This analysis supports the idea that the invention of the WASH complex has involved the incorporation of an independent complex, the CapZ alpha/beta heterodimer, forming the so-called Capping Protein (CP), as illustrated by the yeasts S. cerevisiae and S. pombe, which possess the CP heterodimer but no other subunits of the WASH complex. The alignements of the orthologous genes that we have generated give a view on the conservation of the different subunits and on their organization into domains. Moreover, we propose here a unique nomenclature for the different subunits to prevent future confusions in the field.

Keywords: Arp2/3 complex; CP; CapZ; Ccdc53; KIAA0196; KIAA0592; KIAA1033; VPEF; endosome; strumpellin.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A) Percentage of identity of orthologous subunits of the WASH complex in different species. More than a dozen of WASH genes are present in Homo sapiens and the exact number varies between individuals., Reference has thus been set to the Mus musculus ortholog. The number of CapZ α is indicated in parentheses when more than one. The reference was set to murine CapZ α1, and the % of identity was calculated from the closest homolog in species possessing more than one paralogous CapZ α genes. ND : Not Detected. Accession numbers of the genes can be found in Supplementary Figure 1. (B) Known established relationships between the selected species from different eukaryotic phyla.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Percentage of similarity among orthologous subunits of the WASH complex displayed in a color-coded manner to highlight domain organization. Hot colors represent the highest level of conservation. The similarity score at each position was calculated from each multiple alignment including all subunit orthologs described in Figure 1 using Jalview. These scores were then averaged using a gliding window of 10 residues and colorcoded using the MAT LAB software. This representation gives an overview of the organization of the subunits into domains, but cannot be used to compare the conservation between subunits since the number of detected orthologous genes is variable. The VPEF plot, for example, is derived from only four orthologous genes.
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References

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