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Rapid detection of positive selection in genes and genomes through variation clusters.

ABSTRACT: Positive selection in genes and genomes can point to the evolutionary basis for differences among species and among races within a species. The detection of positive selection can also help identify functionally important protein regions and thus guide protein engineering. Many existing tests for positive selection are excessively conservative, vulnerable to artifacts caused by demographic population history, or computationally very intensive. I here propose a simple and rapid test that is complementary to existing tests and that overcomes some of these problems. It relies on the null hypothesis that neutrally evolving DNA regions should show a Poisson distribution of nucleotide substitutions. The test detects significant deviations from this expectation in the form of variation clusters, highly localized groups of amino acid changes in a coding region. In applying this test to several thousand human-chimpanzee gene orthologs, I show that such variation clusters are not generally caused by relaxed selection. They occur in well-defined domains of a protein's tertiary structure and show a large excess of amino acid replacement over silent substitutions. I also identify multiple new human-chimpanzee orthologs subject to positive selection, among them genes that are involved in reproductive functions, immune defense, and the nervous system.

SUBMITTER: Wagner A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1950645 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Rapid detection of positive selection in genes and genomes through variation clusters.

Wagner Andreas A

Genetics 20070701 4

Positive selection in genes and genomes can point to the evolutionary basis for differences among species and among races within a species. The detection of positive selection can also help identify functionally important protein regions and thus guide protein engineering. Many existing tests for positive selection are excessively conservative, vulnerable to artifacts caused by demographic population history, or computationally very intensive. I here propose a simple and rapid test that is compl ...[more]

PMID: 17603100

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Project description:Plasmids play an important role in bacterial evolution by transferring niche-adaptive functional genes between lineages, thus driving genomic diversification. Bacterial genomes commonly contain multiple, coexisting plasmid replicons, which could fuel adaptation by increasing the range of gene functions available to selection and allowing their recombination. However, plasmid coexistence is difficult to explain because the acquisition of plasmids typically incurs high fitness costs for the host cell. Here, we show that plasmid coexistence was stably maintained without positive selection for plasmid-borne gene functions and was associated with compensatory evolution to reduce fitness costs. In contrast, with positive selection, plasmid coexistence was unstable despite compensatory evolution. Positive selection discriminated between differential fitness benefits of functionally redundant plasmid replicons, retaining only the more beneficial plasmid. These data suggest that while the efficiency of negative selection against plasmid fitness costs declines over time due to compensatory evolution, positive selection to maximize plasmid-derived fitness benefits remains efficient. Our findings help to explain the forces structuring bacterial genomes: coexistence of multiple plasmids in a genome is likely to require either rare positive selection in nature or nonredundancy of accessory gene functions among the coexisting plasmids.IMPORTANCE Bacterial genomes often contain multiple coexisting plasmids that provide important functions like antibiotic resistance. Using lab experiments, we show that such plasmid coexistence within a genome is stable only in environments where the function they encode is useless but is unstable if the function is useful and beneficial for bacterial fitness. Where competing plasmids perform the same useful function, only the most beneficial plasmid is kept by the cell, a process that is similar to competitive exclusion in ecological communities. This process helps explain how bacterial genomes are structured: bacterial genomes expand in size by acquiring multiple plasmids when selection is relaxed but subsequently contract during periods of strong selection for the useful plasmid-encoded function.

Project description:Genome-wide scans for positively selected genes (PSGs) in mammals have provided insight into the dynamics of genome evolution, the genetic basis of differences between species, and the functions of individual genes. However, previous scans have been limited in power and accuracy owing to small numbers of available genomes. Here we present the most comprehensive examination of mammalian PSGs to date, using the six high-coverage genome assemblies now available for eutherian mammals. The increased phylogenetic depth of this dataset results in substantially improved statistical power, and permits several new lineage- and clade-specific tests to be applied. Of approximately 16,500 human genes with high-confidence orthologs in at least two other species, 400 genes showed significant evidence of positive selection (FDR<0.05), according to a standard likelihood ratio test. An additional 144 genes showed evidence of positive selection on particular lineages or clades. As in previous studies, the identified PSGs were enriched for roles in defense/immunity, chemosensory perception, and reproduction, but enrichments were also evident for more specific functions, such as complement-mediated immunity and taste perception. Several pathways were strongly enriched for PSGs, suggesting possible co-evolution of interacting genes. A novel Bayesian analysis of the possible "selection histories" of each gene indicated that most PSGs have switched multiple times between positive selection and nonselection, suggesting that positive selection is often episodic. A detailed analysis of Affymetrix exon array data indicated that PSGs are expressed at significantly lower levels, and in a more tissue-specific manner, than non-PSGs. Genes that are specifically expressed in the spleen, testes, liver, and breast are significantly enriched for PSGs, but no evidence was found for an enrichment for PSGs among brain-specific genes. This study provides additional evidence for widespread positive selection in mammalian evolution and new genome-wide insights into the functional implications of positive selection.

Project description:BackgroundNatural selection has traditionally been understood as a force responsible for pushing genes to states of higher translational efficiency, whereas lower translational efficiency has been explained by neutral mutation and genetic drift. We looked for evidence of directional selection resulting in increased unpreferred codon usage (and presumably reduced translational efficiency) in three divergent clusters of eukaryotic genomes using a simple optimal-codon-based metric (Kp/Ku).ResultsHere we show that for some genes natural selection is indeed responsible for causing accelerated unpreferred codon substitution, and document the scope of this selection. In Cryptococcus and to a lesser extent Drosophila, we find many genes showing a statistically significant signal of selection for unpreferred codon usage in one or more lineages. We did not find evidence for this type of selection in Saccharomyces. The signal of positive selection observed from unpreferred synonymous codon substitutions is coincident in Cryptococcus and Drosophila with the distribution of upstream open reading frames (uORFs), another genic feature known to reduce translational efficiency. Functional enrichment analysis of genes exhibiting low Kp/Ku ratios reveals that genes in regulatory roles are particularly subject to this type of selection.ConclusionThrough genome-wide scans, we find recent selection for unpreferred codon usage at approximately 1% of genetic loci in a Cryptococcus and several genes in Drosophila. Unpreferred codons can impede translation efficiency, and we find that genes with translation-impeding uORFs are enriched for this selection signal. We find that regulatory genes are particularly likely to be subject to selection for unpreferred codon usage. Given that expression noise can propagate through regulatory cascades, and that low translational efficiency can reduce expression noise, this finding supports the hypothesis that translational efficiency may be suppressed in some cases to reduce stochastic noise in gene expression.

Dataset Information

Rapid detection of positive selection in genes and genomes through variation clusters.

Publications

Rapid detection of positive selection in genes and genomes through variation clusters.

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