Sequence Similarity of Glutathione S-Transferase between a Land Plant and an Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungus

Abstract

Arbuscular mycorrhiza is the most ubiquitous and oldest symbiosis between land plants and fungi in terrestrial areas. However, details of the symbiosis are largely unknown. DNA sequence information on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi is currently being accumulated. An expressed sequence tag (EST) clone from Glomus intraradices encodes glutathione S-transferase (GST), GiGSTF1, whose sequence is significantly similar to that of plant phi-class GSTs, which is a subgroup of a large gene family in plant GST. This study analyzes the phylogenetic relationship between plant and fungal GSTs, and the origin of plant phi-class GST is discussed from the standpoint of plant evolution.