The Evolution and Functional Role of Flavin-based Prokaryotic Photoreceptors

Flavin-based photoreceptor proteins of the LOV (light, oxygen and voltage) superfamily are ubiquitous and appear to be essential blue-light sensing systems not only in plants, algae and fungi, but also in prokaryotes, where they are represented in more than 10% of known species. Despite their broad occurrence, only in few cases LOV proteins have been correlated with important phenomena such as bacterial infectivity, selective growth patterns or/and stress responses; nevertheless these few known roles are helping us understand the multiple ways by which prokaryotes can exploit these soluble blue-light photoreceptors. Given the large number of sequences now deposited in databases, it becomes meaningful to define a signature for bona fide LOV domains, a procedure that facilitates identification of proteins with new properties and phylogenetic analysis. The latter clearly evidences that a class of LOV proteins from alpha-proteobacteria is the closest prokaryotic relative of eukaryotic LOV domains, whereas cyanobacterial sequences cluster with the archaeal and the other bacterial LOV domains. Distance trees built for LOV domains suggest complex evolutionary patterns, possibly involving multiple horizontal gene transfer events. Based on available data, the invivo relevance and evolution of prokaryotic LOV is discussed.