Journal article
A Screen for Gene Paralogies Delineating Evolutionary Branching Order of Early Metazoa
G3 (Bethesda, Md.), Vol.10(2), pp.811-826
02/06/2020
DOI: 10.1534/g3.119.400951
PMCID: PMC7003098
PMID: 31879283
Abstract
The evolutionary diversification of animals is one of Earth's greatest marvels, yet its earliest steps are shrouded in mystery. Animals, the monophyletic clade known as Metazoa, evolved wildly divergent multicellular life strategies featuring ciliated sensory epithelia. In many lineages epithelial sensoria became coupled to increasingly complex nervous systems. Currently, different phylogenetic analyses of single-copy genes support mutually-exclusive possibilities that either Porifera or Ctenophora is sister to all other animals. Resolving this dilemma would advance the ecological and evolutionary understanding of the first animals and the evolution of nervous systems. Here we describe a comparative phylogenetic approach based on gene duplications. We computationally identify and analyze gene families with early metazoan duplications using an approach that mitigates apparent gene loss resulting from the miscalling of paralogs. In the transmembrane channel-like (TMC) family of mechano-transducing channels, we find ancient duplications that define separate clades for Eumetazoa (Placozoa + Cnidaria + Bilateria)
Ctenophora, and one duplication that is shared only by Eumetazoa and Porifera. In the Max-like protein X (MLX and MLXIP) family of bHLH-ZIP regulators of metabolism, we find that all major lineages from Eumetazoa and Porifera (sponges) share a duplicated gene pair that is sister to the single-copy gene maintained in Ctenophora. These results suggest a new avenue for deducing deep phylogeny by choosing rather than avoiding ancient gene paralogies.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- A Screen for Gene Paralogies Delineating Evolutionary Branching Order of Early Metazoa
- Creators
- Albert Erives - Department of Biology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, 52242 albert-erives@uiowa.edu bernd-fritzsch@uiowa.eduBernd Fritzsch - Department of Biology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, 52242 albert-erives@uiowa.edu bernd-fritzsch@uiowa.edu
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- G3 (Bethesda, Md.), Vol.10(2), pp.811-826
- DOI
- 10.1534/g3.119.400951
- PMID
- 31879283
- PMCID
- PMC7003098
- NLM abbreviation
- G3 (Bethesda)
- eISSN
- 2160-1836
- Publisher
- United States
- Grant note
- R01 AG060504 / NIA NIH HHS
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 02/06/2020
- Academic Unit
- Iowa Neuroscience Institute; Biology; Craniofacial Anomalies Research Center
- Record Identifier
- 9984071777802771
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