AsianScientist (Sep. 14, 2016) – Scientists in India have shown that the complex compartments and traffic systems within living cells could arise randomly in 25 percent of cases. Their findings have been published in eLife.
Within cells, the Golgi complex is a set of compartments that is essential for processing, packaging and transporting proteins and other molecules. A key characteristic of the Golgi is its organization as a ‘maturation chain’ with different compartments having variable molecular compositions.
PhD student Somya Mani and Dr. Mukund Thattai from the National Center for Biological Sciences decided to investigate the emergence of the Golgi complex and its attendant traffic system, by creating computer simulations of a simple model. In roughly a quarter of their simulations, traffic networks over time developed distinct patterns closely resembling those of a Golgi complex.
Their findings suggest that despite the lack of a selection mechanism for budding or fusion, a vesicular traffic network in a cell could give rise to a functional ‘maturation chain’ of compartments purely by chance. In other words, the researchers’ work shows that the evolution of the Golgi complex is likely to have been non-adaptive—no selection system needs to have pushed cells to develop a Golgi complex.
“We could argue that the Golgi might have come about for some other purpose, a purpose that nobody has been able to figure out. But the essence of this work, is that there is no other purpose,” said Thattai.
The scientists are planning to use their model to study infectious systems like tuberculosis and HIV, which are caused by intracellular parasites that hijack a cell’s vesicular traffic system for their own use.
The article can be found at: Mani and Thattai (2016) Stacking the Odds for Golgi Cisternal Maturation.
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Source: National Center for Biological Sciences.
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