The impact of transposable elements in adaptive evolution

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 1537-1549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukas Schrader ◽  
Jürgen Schmitz
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga V. Bondareva ◽  
Nadezhda A. Potapova ◽  
Kirill A. Konovalov ◽  
Tatyana V. Petrova ◽  
Natalia I. Abramson

Abstract Background Mitochondrial genes encode proteins involved in oxidative phosphorylation. Variations in lifestyle and ecological niche can be directly reflected in metabolic performance. Subterranean rodents represent a good model for testing hypotheses on adaptive evolution driven by important ecological shifts. Voles and lemmings of the subfamily Arvicolinae (Rodentia: Cricetidae) provide a good example for studies of adaptive radiation. This is the youngest group within the order Rodentia showing the fastest rates of diversification, including the transition to the subterranean lifestyle in several phylogenetically independent lineages. Results We evaluated the signatures of selection in the mitochondrial cytochrome b (cytB) gene in 62 Arvicolinae species characterized by either subterranean or surface-dwelling lifestyle by assessing amino acid sequence variation, exploring the functional consequences of the observed variation in the tertiary protein structure, and estimating selection pressure. Our analysis revealed that: (1) three of the convergent amino acid substitutions were found among phylogenetically distant subterranean species and (2) these substitutions may have an influence on the protein complex structure, (3) cytB showed an increased ω and evidence of relaxed selection in subterranean lineages, relative to non-subterranean, and (4) eight protein domains possess increased nonsynonymous substitutions ratio in subterranean species. Conclusions Our study provides insights into the adaptive evolution of the cytochrome b gene in the Arvicolinae subfamily and its potential implications in the molecular mechanism of adaptation. We present a framework for future characterizations of the impact of specific mutations on the function, physiology, and interactions of the mtDNA-encoded proteins involved in oxidative phosphorylation.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle C. Stitzer ◽  
Sarah N. Anderson ◽  
Nathan M. Springer ◽  
Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra

Transposable elements (TEs) constitute the majority of flowering plant DNA, reflecting their tremendous success in subverting, avoiding, and surviving the defenses of their host genomes to ensure their selfish replication. More than 85% of the sequence of the maize genome can be ascribed to past transposition, providing a major contribution to the structure of the genome. Evidence from individual loci has informed our understanding of how transposition has shaped the genome, and a number of individual TE insertions have been causally linked to dramatic phenotypic changes. But genome-wide analyses in maize and other taxa have frequently represented TEs as a relatively homogeneous class of fragmentary relics of past transposition, obscuring their evolutionary history and interaction with their host genome. Using an updated annotation of structurally intact TEs in the maize reference genome, we investigate the family-level ecological and evolutionary dynamics of TEs in maize. Integrating a variety of data, from descriptors of individual TEs like coding capacity, expression, and methylation, as well as similar features of the sequence they inserted into, we model the relationship between these attributes of the genomic environment and the survival of TE copies and families. Our analyses reveal a diversity of ecological strategies of TE families, each representing the evolution of a distinct ecological niche allowing survival of the TE family. In contrast to the wholesale relegation of all TEs to a single category of junk DNA, these differences generate a rich ecology of the genome, suggesting families of TEs that coexist in time and space compete and cooperate with each other. We conclude that while the impact of transposition is highly family- and context-dependent, a family-level understanding of the ecology of TEs in the genome can refine our ability to predict the role of TEs in generating genetic and phenotypic diversity.‘Lumping our beautiful collection of transposons into a single category is a crime’-Michael R. Freeling, Mar. 10, 2017


2007 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnar Helgason ◽  
Snæbjörn Pálsson ◽  
Gudmar Thorleifsson ◽  
Struan F A Grant ◽  
Valur Emilsson ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Nicolas Rodrigue ◽  
Thibault Latrille ◽  
Nicolas Lartillot

Abstract In recent years, codon substitution models based on the mutation–selection principle have been extended for the purpose of detecting signatures of adaptive evolution in protein-coding genes. However, the approaches used to date have either focused on detecting global signals of adaptive regimes—across the entire gene—or on contexts where experimentally derived, site-specific amino acid fitness profiles are available. Here, we present a Bayesian site-heterogeneous mutation–selection framework for site-specific detection of adaptive substitution regimes given a protein-coding DNA alignment. We offer implementations, briefly present simulation results, and apply the approach on a few real data sets. Our analyses suggest that the new approach shows greater sensitivity than traditional methods. However, more study is required to assess the impact of potential model violations on the method, and gain a greater empirical sense its behavior on a broader range of real data sets. We propose an outline of such a research program.


1999 ◽  
Vol 266 (1429) ◽  
pp. 1677-1683 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. T. J. Emery ◽  
T. E. Robinson ◽  
R. Duddington ◽  
J. F. Y. Brookfield

Development ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 143 (22) ◽  
pp. 4101-4114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose L. Garcia-Perez ◽  
Thomas J. Widmann ◽  
Ian R. Adams

2011 ◽  
Vol 279 (1727) ◽  
pp. 247-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bjørn Østman ◽  
Arend Hintze ◽  
Christoph Adami

Evolutionary adaptation is often likened to climbing a hill or peak. While this process is simple for fitness landscapes where mutations are independent, the interaction between mutations (epistasis) as well as mutations at loci that affect more than one trait (pleiotropy) are crucial in complex and realistic fitness landscapes. We investigate the impact of epistasis and pleiotropy on adaptive evolution by studying the evolution of a population of asexual haploid organisms (haplotypes) in a model of N interacting loci, where each locus interacts with K other loci. We use a quantitative measure of the magnitude of epistatic interactions between substitutions, and find that it is an increasing function of K . When haplotypes adapt at high mutation rates, more epistatic pairs of substitutions are observed on the line of descent than expected. The highest fitness is attained in landscapes with an intermediate amount of ruggedness that balance the higher fitness potential of interacting genes with their concomitant decreased evolvability. Our findings imply that the synergism between loci that interact epistatically is crucial for evolving genetic modules with high fitness, while too much ruggedness stalls the adaptive process.


Author(s):  
Marisol Domínguez ◽  
Elise Dugas ◽  
Médine Benchouaia ◽  
Basile Leduque ◽  
José Jimenez-Gomez ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTTomatoes come in a multitude of shapes and flavors despite a narrow genetic pool. Here, we leveraged whole-genome resequencing data available for 602 cultivated and wild accessions to determine the contribution of transposable elements (TEs) to tomato diversity. We identified 6,906 TE insertions polymorphisms (TIPs), which result from the mobilization of 337 distinct TE families. Most TIPs are low frequency variants and disproportionately located within or adjacent to genes involved in environmental response. In addition, we show that genic TE insertions tend to have strong transcriptional effects and can notably lead to the generation of multiple transcript isoforms. We also uncovered through genome-wide association studies (GWAS) ~180 TIPs associated with extreme variations in major agronomic traits or secondary metabolites. Importantly, these TIPs tend to affect loci that are distinct from those tagged by SNPs. Collectively, our findings suggest a unique and important role for TE mobilization in tomato diversification, with important implications for future breeding.


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