Data from: Effector gene birth in plant parasitic nematodes: neofunctionalization of a housekeeping glutathione synthetase gene

Plant pathogens and parasites are a major threat to global food security.
Plant parasitism has arisen four times independently within the phylum
Nematoda, resulting in at least one parasite of every major food crop in
the world. Some species within the most economically important order
(Tylenchida) secrete proteins termed effectors into their host during
infection to re-programme host development and immunity. The precise
detail of how nematodes evolve new effectors is not clear. Here we
reconstruct the evolutionary history of a novel effector gene family. We
show that during the evolution of plant parasitism in the Tylenchida, the
housekeeping glutathione synthetase (GS) gene was extensively replicated.
New GS paralogues acquired multiple dorsal gland promoter elements,
altered spatial expression to the secretory dorsal gland, altered temporal
expression to primarily parasitic stages, and gained a signal peptide for
secretion. The gene products are delivered into the host plant cell during
infection, giving rise to “GS-like effectors”. Remarkably, by solving the
structure of GS-like effectors we show that during this process they have
also diversified in biochemical activity, and likely represent the
founding members of a novel class of GS-like enzyme. Our results
demonstrate the re-purposing of an endogenous housekeeping gene to form a
family of effectors with modified functions. We anticipate that our
discovery will be a blueprint to understand the evolution of other
plant-parasitic nematode effectors, and the foundation to uncover a novel
enzymatic function.