Journal of Experimental Botany, Vol. 62, No. 6, pp. 1775–1801, 2011 doi:10.1093/jxb/erq411 Advance Access publication 10 January, 2011 DARWIN REVIEW The evolution of glycogen and starch metabolism in eukaryotes gives molecular clues to understand the establishment of plastid endosymbiosis Steven Ball*, Christophe Colleoni, Ugo Cenci, Jenifer Nirmal Raj and Catherine Tirtiaux Unite´ de Glycobiologie Structurale et Fonctionnelle, UMR 8576 CNRS-USTL, Baˆ timent C9, Cite´ Scientifique, F-59655 Villeneuve d’Ascq, France * To whom correspondence should be addressed: E-mail:
[email protected] Received 10 September 2010; Revised 18 November 2010; Accepted 23 November 2010 Downloaded from Abstract Solid semi-crystalline starch and hydrosoluble glycogen define two distinct physical states of the same type of storage polysaccharide. Appearance of semi-crystalline storage polysaccharides appears linked to the http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/ requirement of unicellular diazotrophic cyanobacteria to fuel nitrogenase and protect it from oxygen through respiration of vast amounts of stored carbon. Starch metabolism itself resulted from the merging of the bacterial and eukaryote pathways of storage polysaccharide metabolism after endosymbiosis of the plastid. This generated the three Archaeplastida lineages: the green algae and land plants (Chloroplastida), the red algae (Rhodophyceae), and the glaucophytes (Glaucophyta). Reconstruction of starch metabolism in the common ancestor of Archaeplastida suggests that polysaccharide synthesis was ancestrally cytosolic. In addition, the synthesis of cytosolic starch from the ADP-glucose exported from the cyanobacterial symbiont possibly defined the original by guest on March 30, 2012 metabolic flux by which the cyanobiont provided photosynthate to its host. Additional evidence supporting this scenario include the monophyletic origin of the major carbon translocators of the inner membrane of eukaryote plastids which are sisters to nucleotide-sugar transporters of the eukaryote endomembrane system.