Eukaryotic antiviral immune proteins arose via convergence, horizontal transfer, and ancient inheritance

Abstract

Animals use a variety of cell-autonomous innate immune proteins to detect viral infections and prevent replication. Recent studies have discovered that a subset of mammalian antiviral proteins have homology to anti-phage defense proteins in bacteria, implying that there are aspects of innate immunity that are shared across the Tree of Life. While the majority of these studies have focused on characterizing the diversity and biochemical functions of the bacterial proteins, the evolutionary relationships between animal and bacterial proteins are less clear. This ambiguity is partly due to the long evolutionary distances separating animal and bacterial proteins, which obscures their relationships. Here, we tackle this problem for three innate immune families (CD-NTases [including cGAS], STINGs, and Viperins) by deeply sampling protein diversity across eukaryotes. We find that Viperins and OAS family CD-NTases are truly ancient immune proteins, likely inherited since the last eukaryotic common ancestor and possibly longer. In contrast, we find other immune proteins that arose via at least four independent events of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) from bacteria. Two of these events allowed algae to acquire new bacterial viperins, while two more HGT events gave rise to distinct superfamilies of eukaryotic CD-NTases: the Mab21 superfamily (containing cGAS) which has diversified via a series of animal-specific duplications, and a previously undefined eSMODS superfamily, which more closely resembles bacterial CD-NTases. Finally, we found that cGAS and STING proteins have substantially different histories, with STINGs arising via convergent domain shuffling in bacteria and eukaryotes. Overall, our findings paint a picture of eukaryotic innate immunity as highly dynamic, where eukaryotes build upon their ancient antiviral repertoires through the reuse of protein domains and by repeatedly sampling a rich reservoir of bacterial anti-phage genes.