A New Early Cambrian Lobopod-Bearing Animal (Murero, Spain) and the Problem of the Ecdysozoan Early Diversification

Abstract

The oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) pathway plays a central role in the energetic metabolism of aerobic organisms. Despite such centrality, this pathway has not remained unaltered through evolution, and variations of it, including its complete loss, can be found in organisms adapted to different ecological niches. Fungi, a eukaryotic group of species with a high metabolic diversity, represent an ideal phylum in which to study the evolutionary plasticity of the OXPHOS pathway from a phylogenomics perspective. With more than 100 completely sequenced genomes, and thanks to recent progress in elucidating their evolutionary relationships, fungal species have served to reveal the evolutionary mechanisms that underlie the evolution of the core respiratory pathways. In this chapter, we review recent progress toward the characterization of OXPHOS components in fungi and in understanding their evolution. A special focus is devoted to the history of duplications that the multi-protein complexes in OXPHOS have experienced.