TY  - JOUR
A1  - Zerulla, Karolin
A1  - Chimileski, Scott
A1  - Näther, Daniela
A1  - Gophna, Uri
A1  - Papke, R. Thane
A1  - Soppa, Jörg
T1  - DNA as a phosphate storage polymer and the alternative advantages of polyploidy for growth or survival
T2  - PLoS One
N2  - Haloferax volcanii uses extracellular DNA as a source for carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous. However, it can also grow to a limited extend in the absence of added phosphorous, indicating that it contains an intracellular phosphate storage molecule. As Hfx. volcanii is polyploid, it was investigated whether DNA might be used as storage polymer, in addition to its role as genetic material. It could be verified that during phosphate starvation cells multiply by distributing as well as by degrading their chromosomes. In contrast, the number of ribosomes stayed constant, revealing that ribosomes are distributed to descendant cells, but not degraded. These results suggest that the phosphate of phosphate-containing biomolecules (other than DNA and RNA) originates from that stored in DNA, not in rRNA. Adding phosphate to chromosome depleted cells rapidly restores polyploidy. Quantification of desiccation survival of cells with different ploidy levels showed that under phosphate starvation Hfx. volcanii diminishes genetic advantages of polyploidy in favor of cell multiplication. The consequences of the usage of genomic DNA as phosphate storage polymer are discussed as well as the hypothesis that DNA might have initially evolved in evolution as a storage polymer, and the various genetic benefits evolved later.
Y1  - 2014
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/33618
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-336187
SN  - 1932-6203
N1  - Copyright: © 2014 Zerulla et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
VL  - 9
IS  - (4):e94819
PB  - PLoS
CY  - Lawrence, Kan.
ER  -