[Suggested mitochondrial ancestry of non-mitochondrial ATP/ADP]

Abstract

One of the major evolutionary events that transformed endosymbiotic bacterium into mitochondrion was an acquisition of ATP/ADP carrier in order to supply the host with respiration-derived ATP. Along with mitochondrial carrier, unrelated carrier is known which is characteristic of intracellular chlamydiae, plastids, parasitic intracellular eukaryote Encephalitozoon cuniculi, and the genus Rickettsia of obligate endosymbiotic alpha-Proteobacteria. This non-mitochondrial ATP/ADP carrier was recently described in rickettsia-like endosymbionts - a group of obligate intracellular bacteria, classified with the order Rickettsiales, which have diverged after free-living alpha-Proteobacteria but before sister groups of the Rickettsiaceae assemblage (true rickettsiae) and mitochondria. Published controversial phylogenetic data on the non-mitochondrial carrier were reanalysed in the present work using both DNA and protein sequences, and various methods including Bayesian analysis. The data presented are consistent with classic endosymbiont theory for the origin of mitochondria and also suggest that even last but one common ancestor of rickettsiae and organelles may have been an endosymbiotic bacterium in which ATP/ADP carrier has first originated.