Pigmentation Pathway Evolution after Whole-Genome Duplication in Fish

Whole-genome duplications (WGDs) have occurred repeatedly in the vertebrate lineage, but their evolutionary significance for phenotypic evolution remains elusive. Here, we have investigated the impact of the fish-specific genome duplication (FSGD) on the evolution of pigmentation pathways in teleost fishes. Pigmentation and color patterning are among the most diverse traits in teleosts, and their pigmentary system is the most complex of all vertebrate groups

Report of the fourth international workshop on human chromosome 18 mapping 1996

Contains fulltext : 22905.PDF (publisher's version ) (Open Access

Calculating structural complexity in phylogenies using ancestral ontologies

Complexity is an important aspect of evolutionary biology, but there are many reasonable concepts of complexity, and its objective measurement is an elusive matter. Here we develop a simple measure of complexity based on counts of elements, incorporating the hierarchical information as represented in anatomical ontologies. Neomorphic and transformational characters are used to identify novelties and individuated morphological regions, respectively. By linking the characters to terms in an anatomical ontology a node-driven approach is implemented, where a node ontology and a complexity score are inferred from the optimization of individual characters on each ancestral or terminal node. From the atomized vector of character scorings, the anatomical ontology is used to integrate the hierarchical structure of morphology in terminals and ancestors. These node ontologies are used to calculate a measure of complexity that can be traced on phylogenetic trees and is harmonious with usual phylogenetic operations. This strategy is compared with a terminal-driven approach, in which the complexity scores are calculated only for terminals, and optimized as a continuous character on the internal nodes. These ideas are applied to a real dataset of 166 araneomorph spider species scored for 393 characters, using Spider Ontology (SPD, https://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/ SPD); complexity scores and transitions are calculated for each node and branch, respectively. This result in a distribution of transitions skewed towards simplification; the transitions in complexity have no apparent correlation with character branch lengths. The node-driven and terminal-driven estimations are generally correlated in the complexity scores, but have higher divergence in the transition values. The structure of the ontology is used to provide complexity scores for organ systems and body parts of the focal groups.Fil: Ramirez, Martin Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "bernardino Rivadavia"; ArgentinaFil: Michalik, Peter. Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität. Zoologisches Institut Und Museum; Alemani

Modeling gene and genome duplications in eukaryotes

Recent analysis of complete eukaryotic genome sequences has revealed that gene duplication has been rampant. Moreover, next to a continuous mode of gene duplication, in many eukaryotic organisms the complete genome has been duplicated in their evolutionary past. Such large-scale gene duplication events have been associated with important evolutionary transitions or major leaps in development and adaptive radiations of species. Here, we present an evolutionary model that simulates the duplication dynamics of genes, considering genome-wide duplication events and a continuous mode of gene duplication. Modeling the evolution of the different functional categories of genes assesses the importance of different duplication events for gene families involved in specific functions or processes. By applying our model to the Arabidopsis genome, for which there is compelling evidence for three whole-genome duplications, we show that gene loss is strikingly different for large-scale and small-scale duplication events and highly biased toward certain functional classes. We provide evidence that some categories of genes were almost exclusively expanded through large-scale gene duplication events. In particular, we show that the three whole-genome duplications in Arabidopsis have been directly responsible for >90% of the increase in transcription factors, signal transducers, and developmental genes in the last 350 million years. Our evolutionary model is widely applicable and can be used to evaluate different assumptions regarding small- or large-scale gene duplication events in eukaryotic genomes

MicroRNAs and the advent of vertebrate morphological complexity

The causal basis of vertebrate complexity has been sought in genome duplication events (GDEs) that occurred during the emergence of vertebrates, but evidence beyond coincidence is wanting. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have recently been identified as a viable causal factor in increasing organismal complexity through the action of these ≈22-nt noncoding RNAs in regulating gene expression. Because miRNAs are continuously being added to animalian genomes, and, once integrated into a gene regulatory network, are strongly conserved in primary sequence and rarely secondarily lost, their evolutionary history can be accurately reconstructed. Here, using a combination of Northern analyses and genomic searches, we show that 41 miRNA families evolved at the base of Vertebrata, as they are found and/or detected in lamprey, but not in either ascidians or amphioxus (or any other nonchordate taxon). When placed into temporal context, the rate of miRNA acquisition and the extent of phenotypic evolution are anomalously high early in vertebrate history, far outstripping any other episode in chordate evolution. The genomic position of miRNA paralogues in humans, together with gene trees incorporating lamprey orthologues, indicates that although GDEs can account for an increase in the diversity of miRNA family members, which occurred before the last common ancestor of all living vertebrates, GDEs cannot account for the origin of these novel families themselves. We hypothesize that lying behind the origin of vertebrate complexity is the dramatic expansion of the noncoding RNA inventory including miRNAs, rather than an increase in the protein-encoding inventory caused by GDEs