The general title given to this thesis represents the underlying ethos of my work that links most parts together, as well as being the motivation I now have for future work. The main scientific concern I present within is a more specific evolutionary theory on what has happened in land plants to a well known Calcium cell-signalling pathway found in mammals. Namely the Inositol triphosphate mediated Calcium release of ITPR channels in mammalian neural and muscle cells. This is discussed at length in Part ii, Chapters 2-3 of this thesis. Chapter 3 contains a detailed discussion surrounding an already known and characterised Calcium channel (TPC1) in Arabidopsis thaliana that was found to be related albeit very distantly to ITPR channels. Additional partner regulatory proteins are introduced and some justification is made that they interact directly with TPCl providing it with regulated gated activity specifically in guard cells. During the development of the theory presented in Part ii it became essential to understand the location and function of disordered protein regions in sequences over many species and genes, This lead to the production of a Database of Disordered Protein Predictions (D2P2 described in Part iii, as well as methods for visualizing multiple classes of protein annotations such as structural domains, post- translational modification sites, and regions of protein disorder that fold on contact, In Chapter 5 discussion surrounding major results from producing D2P2 and its implications on the evolution of disordered protein state are presented. Finally in Part iv I introduce some relatively unrelated work investigating the domain content of a new genome being sequenced at the King Abdullha University of Science and Technology for the Dinoflagellate species Symbiodinium microadriaticum. One of my main tasks in this collaboration was to identify proteins that mediate many endosymbiotic relationships carried out by Symbiodinium. Finding an example of a superfamily only found in a single clade of bacteria I identify a plausible target protein and mechanism for eluding Toll-like Receptors of host species. In the concluding Part v I summarise pieces of work that I have yet to finish, but include here to give some impression of the sorts of work I have been thinking about and hope to one day complete.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:658870 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Oates, Matt E. |
| Publisher | University of Bristol |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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