Comparative Genomics of the Lipid Droplet-Associated Protein Seipin Across Eukaryotic Diversity Illuminates An Ancient Origin and Conserved Structural Diversity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Lipid droplets (LDs) are ubiquitous across living organisms. Characterised in eukaryotes by their lipid monolayer and essential for lipid storage and metabolism in animals, plants, and yeast, little is known about the evolutionary diversity of extant LDs across the eukaryotic tree of life. LDs facilitate an impressive variety of cellular functions outside of just lipid storage; in Metazoa, these include stress responses, cellular signaling, and membrane remodeling. Likewise, the distribution of these functions across eukaryotic diversity is unknown. We have examined the evolutionary trajectory of seipin, a protein associated with LD biogenesis, across eukaryotic diversity. We have identified a pan-eukaryotic distribution of seipin, with an evolutionary pattern that indicates presence in the Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor. Ancient conservation of multiple variants of seipin suggests that seipin may multiple conserved functional roles within the cell. Finally, we identify a lack of sequence homology between BSCL2/seipin in Homo sapiens and the sei-1 gene previously identified as a functional homologue of BSCL2 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae . Though our results suggest that sei-1 may be a highly divergent homologue of BSCL2 / seipin rather than an unrelated protein, the divergence suggests that researchers may need to be cautious applying results obtained in Saccharomyces spp. . Visual abstract
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".