scholarly journals Patterns of Natural Selection on Mitochondrial Protein-Coding Genes in Lungless Salamanders: Relaxed Purifying Selection and Presence of Positively Selected Codon Sites in the Family Plethodontidae

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Ryosuke Kakehashi ◽  
Atsushi Kurabayashi

There are two distinct lungless groups in caudate amphibians (salamanders and newts) (the family Plethodontidae and the genus Onychodactylus, from the family Hynobiidae). Lunglessness is considered to have evolved in response to environmental and/or ecological adaptation with respect to oxygen requirements. We performed selection analyses on lungless salamanders to elucidate the selective patterns of mitochondrial protein-coding genes associated with lunglessness. The branch model and RELAX analyses revealed the occurrence of relaxed selection (an increase of the dN/dS ratio = ω value) in most mitochondrial protein-coding genes of plethodontid salamander branches but not in those of Onychodactylus. Additional branch model and RELAX analyses indicated that direct-developing plethodontids showed the relaxed pattern for most mitochondrial genes, although metamorphosing plethodontids had fewer relaxed genes. Furthermore, aBSREL analysis detected positively selected codons in three plethodontid branches but not in Onychodactylus. One of these three branches corresponded to the most recent common ancestor, and the others corresponded with the most recent common ancestors of direct-developing branches within Hemidactyliinae. The positive selection of mitochondrial protein-coding genes in Plethodontidae is probably associated with the evolution of direct development.

2019 ◽  
Vol 07 (02) ◽  
Author(s):  
Saira Bibi ◽  
Muhammad Fiaz Khan ◽  
Aqsa Rehman ◽  
Faisal Nouroz

Diversity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Jakub Sawicki ◽  
Katarzyna Krawczyk ◽  
Monika Ślipiko ◽  
Monika Szczecińska

The leafy liverwort Nowellia curvifolia is a widespread Holarctic species belonging to the family Cephaloziaceae. It is made up of a newly sequenced, assembled and annotated organellar genomes of two European specimens, which revealed the structure typical for liverworts, but also provided new insights into its microevolution. The plastome of N. curvifolia is the second smallest among photosynthetic liverworts, with the shortest known inverted repeats. Moreover, it is the smallest liverwort genome with a complete gene set, since two smaller genomes of Aneura mirabilis and Cololejeunea lanciloba are missing six and four protein-coding genes respectively. The reduction of plastome size in leafy liverworts seems to be mainly impacted by deletion within specific region between psbA and psbD genes. The comparative intraspecific analysis revealed single SNPs difference among European individuals and a low number of 35 mutations differentiating European and North American specimens. However, the genetic resources of Asian specimen enabled to identify 1335 SNPs in plastic protein-coding genes suggesting an advanced cryptic speciation within N. curvifolia or the presence of undescribed morphospecies in Asia. Newly sequenced mitogenomes from European specimens revealed identical gene content and structure to previously published and low intercontinental differentiation limited to one substitution and three indels. The RNA-seq based RNA editing analysis revealed 17 and 127 edited sites in plastome and mitogenome respectively including one non-canonical editing event in plastid chiL gene. The U to C editing is common in non-seed plants, but in liverwort plastome is reported for the first time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 1876
Author(s):  
Frida Belinky ◽  
Ishan Ganguly ◽  
Eugenia Poliakov ◽  
Vyacheslav Yurchenko ◽  
Igor B. Rogozin

Nonsense mutations turn a coding (sense) codon into an in-frame stop codon that is assumed to result in a truncated protein product. Thus, nonsense substitutions are the hallmark of pseudogenes and are used to identify them. Here we show that in-frame stop codons within bacterial protein-coding genes are widespread. Their evolutionary conservation suggests that many of them are not pseudogenes, since they maintain dN/dS values (ratios of substitution rates at non-synonymous and synonymous sites) significantly lower than 1 (this is a signature of purifying selection in protein-coding regions). We also found that double substitutions in codons—where an intermediate step is a nonsense substitution—show a higher rate of evolution compared to null models, indicating that a stop codon was introduced and then changed back to sense via positive selection. This further supports the notion that nonsense substitutions in bacteria are relatively common and do not necessarily cause pseudogenization. In-frame stop codons may be an important mechanism of regulation: Such codons are likely to cause a substantial decrease of protein expression levels.


Genetics ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 143 (1) ◽  
pp. 537-548 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sudhir Kumar

Abstract Maximum likelihood methods were used to study the differences in substitution rates among the four nucleotides and among different nucleotide sites in mitochondrial protein-coding genes of vertebrates. In the lst+2nd codon position data, the frequency of nucleotide G is negatively correlated with evolutionary rates of genes, substitution rates vary substantially among sites, and the transition / transversion rate bias (R) is two to five times larger than that expected at random. Generally, largest transition biases and greatest differences in substitution rates among sites are found in the highly conserved genes. The 3rd positions in placental mammal genes exhibit strong nucleotide composition biases and the transitional rates exceed transversional rates by one to two orders of magnitude. Tamura-Nei and Hasegawa-Kishino-Yano models with gamma distributed variable rates among sites (gamma parameter, α) adequately describe the nucleotide substitution process in 1st+2nd position data. In these data, ignoring differences in substitution rates among sites leads to largest biases while estimating substitution rates. Kimura's two-parameter model with variable-rates among sites performs satisfactorily in likelihood estimation of R, α, and overall amount of evolution for lst+2nd position data. It can also be used to estimate pairwise distances with appropriate values of α for a majority of genes.


Insects ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 779 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ke-Ke Xu ◽  
Qing-Ping Chen ◽  
Sam Pedro Galilee Ayivi ◽  
Jia-Yin Guan ◽  
Kenneth B. Storey ◽  
...  

Insects of the order Phasmatodea are mainly distributed in the tropics and subtropics and are best known for their remarkable camouflage as plants. In this study, we sequenced three complete mitochondrial genomes from three different families: Orestes guangxiensis, Peruphasma schultei, and Phryganistria guangxiensis. The lengths of the three mitochondrial genomes were 15,896 bp, 16,869 bp, and 17,005 bp, respectively, and the gene composition and structure of the three stick insects were identical to those of the most recent common ancestor of insects. The phylogenetic relationships among stick insects have been chaotic for a long time. In order to discuss the intra- and inter-ordinal relationship of Phasmatodea, we used the 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs) of 85 species for maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference (BI) analyses. Results showed that the internal topological structure of Phasmatodea had a few differences in both ML and BI trees and long-branch attraction (LBA) appeared between Embioptera and Zoraptera, which led to a non-monophyletic Phasmatodea. Consequently, after removal of the Embioptera and Zoraptera species, we re-performed ML and BI analyses with the remaining 81 species, which showed identical topology except for the position of Tectarchus ovobessus (Phasmatodea). We recovered the monophyly of Phasmatodea and the sister-group relationship between Phasmatodea and Mantophasmatodea. Our analyses also recovered the monophyly of Heteropterygidae and the paraphyly of Diapheromeridae, Phasmatidae, Lonchodidae, Lonchodinae, and Clitumninae. In this study, Peruphasma schultei (Pseudophasmatidae), Phraortes sp. YW-2014 (Lonchodidae), and species of Diapheromeridae clustered into the clade of Phasmatidae. Within Heteropterygidae, O. guangxiensis was the sister clade to O. mouhotii belonging to Dataminae, and the relationship of (Heteropteryginae + (Dataminae + Obriminae)) was recovered.


2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 162-174
Author(s):  
Ming-Hui Yan ◽  
Chun-Yang Li ◽  
Peter W. Fritsch ◽  
Jie Cai ◽  
Heng-Chang Wang

Abstract—The phylogenetic relationships among 11 out of the 12 genera of the angiosperm family Styracaceae have been largely resolved with DNA sequence data based on all protein-coding genes of the plastome. The only genus that has not been phylogenomically investigated in the family with molecular data is the monotypic genus Parastyrax, which is extremely rare in the wild and difficult to collect. To complete the sampling of the genera comprising the Styracaceae, examine the plastome composition of Parastyrax, and further explore the phylogenetic relationships of the entire family, we sequenced the whole plastome of P. lacei and incorporated it into the Styracaceae dataset for phylogenetic analysis. Similar to most others in the family, the plastome is 158189 bp in length and contains a large single-copy region of 88085 bp and a small single-copy region of 18540 bp separated by two inverted-repeat regions of 25781 bp each. A total of 113 genes was predicted, including 79 protein-coding genes, 30 tRNA genes, and four rRNA genes. Phylogenetic relationships among all 12 genera of the family were constructed with 79 protein-coding genes. Consistent with a previous study, Styrax, Huodendron, and a clade of Alniphyllum + Bruinsmia were successively sister to the remainder of the family. Parastyrax was strongly supported as sister to an internal clade comprising seven other genera of the family, whereas Halesia and Pterostyrax were both recovered as polyphyletic, as in prior studies. However, when we employed either the whole plastome or the large- or small-single copy regions as datasets, Pterostyrax was resolved as monophyletic with 100% support, consistent with expectations based on morphology and indicating that non-coding regions of the Styracaceae plastome contain informative phylogenetic signal. Conversely Halesia was still resolved as polyphyletic but with novel strong support.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 6821-6832 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Njaramba Ngatia ◽  
Tian Ming Lan ◽  
Thi Dao Dinh ◽  
Le Zhang ◽  
Ahmed Khalid Ahmed ◽  
...  

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