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- Nabholz, Benoit, et al.
(författare)
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High Levels of Gene Expression Explain the Strong Evolutionary Constraint of Mitochondrial Protein-Coding Genes
- 2013
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Ingår i: Molecular biology and evolution. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0737-4038 .- 1537-1719. ; 30:2, s. 272-284
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The nearly neutral theory of molecular evolution has been widely accepted as the guiding principle for understanding how selection affects gene sequence evolution. One of its central predictions is that the rate at which proteins evolve should negatively scale with effective population size (N-e). In contrast to the expectation of reduced selective constraint in the mitochondrial genome following from its lower N-e, we observe what can be interpreted as the opposite: for a taxonomically diverse set of organisms (birds, mammals, insects, and nematodes), mitochondrially encoded protein-coding genes from the oxidative phosphorylation pathway (mtOXPHOS; n = 12-13) show markedly stronger signatures of purifying selection (illustrated by low d(N)/d(S)) than their nuclear counterparts interacting in the same pathway (nuOXPHOS; n: similar to 75). To understand these unexpected evolutionary dynamics, we consider a number of structural and functional parameters including gene expression, hydrophobicity, transmembrane position, gene ontology, GC content, substitution rate, proportion of amino acids in transmembrane helices, and protein-protein interaction. Across all taxa, unexpectedly large differences in gene expression levels (RNA-seq) between nuclear and mitochondrially encoded genes, and to a lower extent hydrophobicity, explained most of the variation in d(N)/d(S). Similarly, differences in d(N)/d(S) between functional OXPHOS protein complexes could largely be explained by gene expression differences. Overall, by including gene expression and other functional parameters, the unexpected mitochondrial evolutionary dynamics can be understood. Our results not only reaffirm the link between gene expression and protein evolution but also open new questions about the functional role of expression level variation between mitochondrial genes.
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| 2. |
- Nam, Kiwoong, et al.
(författare)
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Molecular evolution of genes in avian genomes
- 2010
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Ingår i: Genome Biology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1474-760X .- 1465-6906. ; 11:6, s. R68-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Obtaining a draft genome sequence of the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), the second bird genome to be sequenced, provides the necessary resource for whole-genome comparative analysis of gene sequence evolution in a non-mammalian vertebrate lineage. To analyze basic molecular evolutionary processes during avian evolution, and to contrast these with the situation in mammals, we aligned the protein-coding sequences of 8,384 1: 1 orthologs of chicken, zebra finch, a lizard and three mammalian species. Results: We found clear differences in the substitution rate at fourfold degenerate sites, being lowest in the ancestral bird lineage, intermediate in the chicken lineage and highest in the zebra finch lineage, possibly reflecting differences in generation time. We identified positively selected and/or rapidly evolving genes in avian lineages and found an over-representation of several functional classes, including anion transporter activity, calcium ion binding, cell adhesion and microtubule cytoskeleton. Conclusions: Focusing specifically on genes of neurological interest and genes differentially expressed in the unique vocal control nuclei of the songbird brain, we find a number of positively selected genes, including synaptic receptors. We found no evidence that selection for beneficial alleles is more efficient in regions of high recombination; in fact, there was a weak yet significant negative correlation between omega and recombination rate, which is in the direction predicted by the Hill-Robertson effect if slightly deleterious mutations contribute to protein evolution. These findings set the stage for studies of functional genetics of avian genes.
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