Dataset Information

Molecular evolution of a pervasive natural amino-acid substitution in Drosophila cryptochrome.

ABSTRACT: Genetic variations in circadian clock genes may serve as molecular adaptations, allowing populations to adapt to local environments. Here, we carried out a survey of genetic variation in Drosophila cryptochrome (cry), the fly's dedicated circadian photoreceptor. An initial screen of 10 European cry alleles revealed substantial variation, including seven non-synonymous changes. The SNP frequency spectra and the excessive linkage disequilibrium in this locus suggested that this variation is maintained by natural selection. We focused on a non-conservative SNP involving a leucine-histidine replacement (L232H) and found that this polymorphism is common, with both alleles at intermediate frequencies across 27 populations surveyed in Europe, irrespective of latitude. Remarkably, we were able to reproduce this natural observation in the laboratory using replicate population cages where the minor allele frequency was initially set to 10%. Within 20 generations, the two allelic variants converged to approximately equal frequencies. Further experiments using congenic strains, showed that this SNP has a phenotypic impact, with variants showing significantly different eclosion profiles. At the long term, these phase differences in eclosion may contribute to genetic differentiation among individuals, and shape the evolution of wild populations.

SUBMITTER: Pegoraro M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3901690 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Molecular evolution of a pervasive natural amino-acid substitution in Drosophila cryptochrome.

Pegoraro Mirko M Noreen Shumaila S Bhutani Supriya S Tsolou Avgi A Schmid Ralf R Kyriacou Charalambos P CP Tauber Eran E

PloS one 20140124 1

Genetic variations in circadian clock genes may serve as molecular adaptations, allowing populations to adapt to local environments. Here, we carried out a survey of genetic variation in Drosophila cryptochrome (cry), the fly's dedicated circadian photoreceptor. An initial screen of 10 European cry alleles revealed substantial variation, including seven non-synonymous changes. The SNP frequency spectra and the excessive linkage disequilibrium in this locus suggested that this variation is mainta ...[more]

PMID: 24475129

Similar Datasets

Project description:In Drosophila, multiple lines of evidence converge in suggesting that beneficial substitutions to the genome may be common. All suffer from confounding factors, however, such that the interpretation of the evidence-in particular, conclusions about the rate and strength of beneficial substitutions-remains tentative. Here, we use genome-wide polymorphism data in D. simulans and sequenced genomes of its close relatives to construct a readily interpretable characterization of the effects of positive selection: the shape of average neutral diversity around amino acid substitutions. As expected under recurrent selective sweeps, we find a trough in diversity levels around amino acid but not around synonymous substitutions, a distinctive pattern that is not expected under alternative models. This characterization is richer than previous approaches, which relied on limited summaries of the data (e.g., the slope of a scatter plot), and relates to underlying selection parameters in a straightforward way, allowing us to make more reliable inferences about the prevalence and strength of adaptation. Specifically, we develop a coalescent-based model for the shape of the entire curve and use it to infer adaptive parameters by maximum likelihood. Our inference suggests that ?13% of amino acid substitutions cause selective sweeps. Interestingly, it reveals two classes of beneficial fixations: a minority (approximately 3%) that appears to have had large selective effects and accounts for most of the reduction in diversity, and the remaining 10%, which seem to have had very weak selective effects. These estimates therefore help to reconcile the apparent conflict among previously published estimates of the strength of selection. More generally, our findings provide unequivocal evidence for strongly beneficial substitutions in Drosophila and illustrate how the rapidly accumulating genome-wide data can be leveraged to address enduring questions about the genetic basis of adaptation.

Dataset Information

Molecular evolution of a pervasive natural amino-acid substitution in Drosophila cryptochrome.

Publications

Molecular evolution of a pervasive natural amino-acid substitution in Drosophila cryptochrome.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets