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Adaptive impact of the chimeric gene Quetzalcoatl in Drosophila melanogaster.

ABSTRACT: Chimeric genes, which form through the genomic fusion of two protein-coding genes, are a significant source of evolutionary novelty in Drosophila melanogaster. However, the propensity of chimeric genes to produce adaptive phenotypic changes is not fully understood. Here, we describe the chimeric gene Quetzalcoatl (Qtzl; CG31864), which formed in the recent past and swept to fixation in D. melanogaster. Qtzl arose through a duplication on chromosome 2L that united a portion of the mitochondrially targeted peptide CG12264 with a segment of the polycomb gene escl. The 3' segment of the gene, which is derived from escl, is inherited out of frame, producing a unique peptide sequence. Nucleotide diversity is drastically reduced and site frequency spectra are significantly skewed surrounding the duplicated region, a finding consistent with a selective sweep on the duplicate region containing Qtzl. Qtzl has an expression profile that largely resembles that of escl, with expression in early pupae, adult females, and male testes. However, expression patterns appear to have been decoupled from both parental genes during later embryonic development and in head tissues of adult males, indicating that Qtzl has developed a distinct regulatory profile through the rearrangement of different 5' and 3' regulatory domains. Furthermore, misexpression of Qtzl suppresses defects in the formation of the neuromuscular junction in larvae, demonstrating that Qtzl can produce phenotypic effects in cells. Together, these results show that chimeric genes can produce structural and regulatory changes in a single mutational step and may be a major factor in adaptive evolution.

SUBMITTER: Rogers RL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2890713 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Adaptive impact of the chimeric gene Quetzalcoatl in Drosophila melanogaster.

Rogers Rebekah L RL Bedford Trevor T Lyons Ana M AM Hartl Daniel L DL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20100601 24

Chimeric genes, which form through the genomic fusion of two protein-coding genes, are a significant source of evolutionary novelty in Drosophila melanogaster. However, the propensity of chimeric genes to produce adaptive phenotypic changes is not fully understood. Here, we describe the chimeric gene Quetzalcoatl (Qtzl; CG31864), which formed in the recent past and swept to fixation in D. melanogaster. Qtzl arose through a duplication on chromosome 2L that united a portion of the mitochondrially ...[more]

PMID: 20534482

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Project description:BackgroundRecent analysis of the human and mouse genomes has shown that a substantial proportion of protein coding genes and cis-regulatory elements contain transposable element (TE) sequences, implicating TE domestication as a mechanism for the origin of genetic novelty. To understand the general role of TE domestication in eukaryotic genome evolution, it is important to assess the acquisition of functional TE sequences by host genomes in a variety of different species, and to understand in greater depth the population dynamics of these mutational events.ResultsUsing an in silico screen for host genes that contain TE sequences, we identified a set of 63 mature "chimeric" transcripts supported by expressed sequence tag (EST) evidence in the Drosophila melanogaster genome. We found a paucity of chimeric TEs relative to expectations derived from non-chimeric TEs, indicating that the majority (approximately 80%) of TEs that generate chimeric transcripts are deleterious and are not observed in the genome sequence. Using a pooled-PCR strategy to assay the presence of gene-TE chimeras in wild strains, we found that over half of the observed chimeric TE insertions are restricted to the sequenced strain, and approximately 15% are found at high frequencies in North American D. melanogaster populations. Estimated population frequencies of chimeric TEs did not differ significantly from non-chimeric TEs, suggesting that the distribution of fitness effects for the observed subset of chimeric TEs is indistinguishable from the general set of TEs in the genome sequence.ConclusionIn contrast to mammalian genomes, we found that fewer than 1% of Drosophila genes produce mRNAs that include bona fide TE sequences. This observation can be explained by the results of our population genomic analysis, which indicates that most potential chimeric TEs in D. melanogaster are deleterious but that a small proportion may contribute to the evolution of novel gene sequences such as nested or intercalated gene structures. Our results highlight the need to establish the fixity of putative cases of TE domestication identified using genome sequences in order to demonstrate their functional importance, and reveal that the contribution of TE domestication to genome evolution may vary drastically among animal taxa.

Dataset Information

Adaptive impact of the chimeric gene Quetzalcoatl in Drosophila melanogaster.

Publications

Adaptive impact of the chimeric gene Quetzalcoatl in Drosophila melanogaster.

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