Computational Proteomic Profiling of Putative Magnetotactic Bacterial Proteins

Magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) are aquatic prokaryotes that navigate using the Earth's geomagnetic fields, a trait facilitated by magnetosomes-membrane structures containing intracellular crystals of magnetite or greigite. These magnetosomes, composed of a phospholipid bilayer with specific proteins, are encoded by the magnetosome island (MAI) which includes key proteins involved in magnetosome formation, iron transport, and chain assembly, with notable variation across species. Magnetosomes also have significant applications, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), drug delivery, bioremediation, and immunological analyses. To understand the evolutionary conservation of magnetosome-associated proteins, we conducted an orthology analysis using OrthoFinder on 11 MTB proteomes, we made a in-house database composed of mam and mms membrane proteins. Based important orthogroups, an IQ-tree analysis was made for a better phylogenetic inference, followed by the construction ofphylogenetic trees were constructed with iTOL, functional predictions were made using InterProScan, and Phobius. Three orthogroups were conserved across all species, with in-house proteins included, comprising proteins involved in proteolysis, cation transport, and cell division. Additionally, we compared our in-house proteins with Rhodospirillum rubrum, revealing shared responses between different proteins. This study reiterates the function and evolutionary significance of MTB proteins through predicted functions. The conservation of magnetotactic proteins, especially within Pseudomonadota species, underscores their potential in diverse applications, even though, exploration of MTB in Costa Rica, where studies are lacking, is recommended.