Related Experiment Videos
Lineage-specific loss and divergence of functionally linked genes in eukaryotes
L Aravind1, H Watanabe, D J Lipman
1National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA.
Summary
Baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae lost ~300 genes and significantly diverged others compared to fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. This gene loss includes functional groups, impacting systems like the spliceosome and potentially driving genome evolution.
Area of Science:
- Comparative genomics
- Yeast evolution
- Molecular biology
Background:
- Schizosaccharomyces pombe and Saccharomyces cerevisiae diverged from a common ancestor.
- Comparative genomic analysis can reveal evolutionary gene loss and divergence patterns.
Purpose of the Study:
- Identify genes conserved in S. pombe and non-fungal eukaryotes but lost or diverged in S. cerevisiae.
- Investigate the functional implications of coordinated gene loss in yeast evolution.
Main Methods:
- Comparative analysis of 4,344 S. pombe protein sequences against eukaryotic sequences.
- Identification of genes missing or highly diverged in S. cerevisiae.
Main Results:
- Approximately 300 genes were lost, and 300 more diverged significantly in S. cerevisiae.
- Coelimination of functionally linked protein groups, including signalosome and spliceosome components, was observed.
- Prediction of coelimination for posttranscriptional gene-silencing system components.
Conclusions:
- Gene loss in S. cerevisiae is not random but involves coordinated elimination of functional systems.
- Loss of posttranscriptional gene silencing may have led to retrotransposition, intron loss, and spliceosome component reduction.
- Systematic analysis of coordinated gene loss can predict novel functional components and complexes.