Rapid Evolution of a Pollen-Specific Oleosin-Like Gene Family from Arabidopsis thaliana and Closely Related Species

AbstractAlternative pre-mRNA splicing (AS) is prevalent among all plants and is involved in many interactions with environmental stresses. However, the evolutionary patterns and underlying mechanisms of AS in plants remain unclear. By analyzing the transcriptomes of six plant species, we revealed that AS diverged rapidly among closely related species, largely due to the gains and losses of AS events among orthologous genes. Furthermore, AS that generates transcripts containing premature termination codons (PTC), although only representing a small fraction of the total AS, are more conserved than those that generate non-PTC containing transcripts, suggesting that AS coupled with nonsense-mediated decay (NMD) might play an important role in regulating mRNA levels post-transcriptionally. With a machine learning approach we analyzed the key determinants of AS to understand the mechanisms underlying its rapid divergence. Among the studied species, the presence/absence of alternative splicing site (SS) within the junction, the distance between the authentic SS and the nearest alternative SS, the size of exon-exon junctions were the major determinants for both alternative 5’ donor site and 3’acceptor site, suggesting a relatively conserved AS mechanism. Comparative analysis further demonstrated that variations of the identified AS determinants, mostly are located in introns, significantly contributed to the AS turnover among closely related species in both Solanaceae and Brassicaceae taxa. These new mechanistic insights into the evolution of AS in plants highlight the importance of post-transcriptional regulation in mediating plant-environment interactions.One sentence summaryChanges of intron located splicing regulators contributed to the rapid evolution of alternative splicing in plants.

Download Full-text

Selection constrains high rates of satellite DNA mutation in Daphnia pulex

10.1101/156554 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Jullien M. Flynn ◽

Ian Caldas ◽

Melania E. Cristescu ◽

Andrew G. Clark

Keyword(s):

Satellite Dna ◽

Related Species ◽

Rapid Evolution ◽

Daphnia Pulex ◽

Selective Constraint ◽

Mutation Rates ◽

Stabilizing Selection ◽

Closely Related Species ◽

Dna Mutation ◽

Evolutionary Forces

AbstractA long-standing evolutionary puzzle is that all eukaryotic genomes contain large amounts of tandemly-repeated satellite DNA whose composition varies greatly among even closely related species. To elucidate the evolutionary forces governing satellite dynamics, quantification of the rates and patterns of mutations in satellite DNA copy number and tests of its selective neutrality are necessary. Here we used whole-genome sequences of 28 mutation accumulation (MA) lines of Daphnia pulex in addition to six isolates from a non-MA population originating from the same progenitor to both estimate mutation rates of abundances of satellite sequences and evaluate the selective regime acting upon them. We found that mutation rates of individual satellite sequence “kmers” were both high and highly variable, ranging from additions/deletions of 0.29 – 105 copies per generation (reflecting changes of 0.12 - 0.80 percent per generation). Our results also provide evidence that new kmer sequences are often formed from existing ones. The non-MA population isolates showed a signal of either purifying or stabilizing selection, with 33 % lower variation in kmer abundance on average than the MA lines, although the level of selective constraint was not evenly distributed across all kmers. The changes between many pairs of kmers were correlated, and the pattern of correlations was significantly different between the MA lines and the non-MA population. Our study demonstrates that kmer sequences can experience extremely rapid evolution in abundance, which can lead to high levels of divergence in genome-wide satellite DNA composition between closely related species.

Download Full-text

The Evolutionary Analysis of “Orphans” From the Drosophila Genome Identifies Rapidly Diverging and Incorrectly Annotated Genes

Genetics ◽

10.1093/genetics/159.2.589 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 159 (2) ◽

pp. 589-598 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Karl J Schmid ◽

Charles F Aquadro

Keyword(s):

Related Species ◽

Rapid Evolution ◽

Model Organisms ◽

Drosophila Genome ◽

Evolutionary Analysis ◽

Orphan Genes ◽

Closely Related Species ◽

Reading Frame ◽

Nearly Neutral Mutations ◽

Neutral Mutations

Abstract In genome projects of eukaryotic model organisms, a large number of novel genes of unknown function and evolutionary history (“orphans”) are being identified. Since many orphans have no known homologs in distant species, it is unclear whether they are restricted to certain taxa or evolve rapidly, either because of a lack of constraints or positive Darwinian selection. Here we use three criteria for the selection of putatively rapidly evolving genes from a single sequence of Drosophila melanogaster. Thirteen candidate genes were chosen from the Adh region on the second chromosome and 1 from the tip of the X chromosome. We succeeded in obtaining sequence from 6 of these in the closely related species D. simulans and D. yakuba. Only 1 of the 6 genes showed a large number of amino acid replacements and in-frame insertions/deletions. A population survey of this gene suggests that its rapid evolution is due to the fixation of many neutral or nearly neutral mutations. Two other genes showed “normal” levels of divergence between species. Four genes had insertions/deletions that destroy the putative reading frame within exons, suggesting that these exons have been incorrectly annotated. The evolutionary analysis of orphan genes in closely related species is useful for the identification of both rapidly evolving and incorrectly annotated genes.

Download Full-text