Phylogenetic Distribution of CMP-Neu5Ac Hydroxylase (CMAH), the Enzyme Synthetizing the Proinflammatory Human Xenoantigen Neu5Gc

Peri, Sateesh; Kulkarni, Asmita; Feyertag, Felix; Berninsone, Patricia M; Alvarez-Ponce, David

We first used the chimpanzee CMAH protein sequence (Chou et al. 1998 ) as query in a BLASTP search against the NCBI nr database, excluding all sequences from deuterostomes. The first two hits corresponded to the green algae Ostreococcus tauri and Micromonas commoda, and 60 prokaryotes, including representatives of proteobacteria, firmicutes, cyanobacteria, actinobacteria, nitrospirae, FCB group (Fibrobacteres, Chlorobi, and Bacteroidetes), and archaebacteria (supplementary table S1, Supplementary Material online). No hits were detected in any other group, including nondeuterostome animals. The distribution of CMAH homologs in nondeuterostomes is equivalent to that observed by Simakov et al. (2015) , who proposed that the CMAH gene could have been passed onto the deuterostome lineage by green algae through horizontal gene transfer.