Reconciliation-based detection of co-evolving gene families
Yao-ban Chan, Vincent Ranwez, Celine Scornavacca1
1ISEM, Université Montpellier 2, Montpellier, 34095, France. celine.scornavacca@univ-montp2.fr.
Background:
Genes located in the same chromosome region share common evolutionary events more often than other genes (e.g. a segmental duplication of this region). Their evolution may also be related if they are involved in the same protein complex or biological process. Identifying co-evolving genes can thus shed light on ancestral genome structures and functional gene interactions.
Results:
We devise a simple, fast and accurate probability method based on species tree-gene tree reconciliations to detect when two gene families have co-evolved. Our method observes the number and location of predicted macro-evolutionary events, and estimates the probability of having the observed number of common events by chance.
Conclusions:
Simulation studies confirm that our method effectively identifies co-evolving families. This opens numerous perspectives on genome-scale analysis where this method could be used to pinpoint co-evolving gene families and thus help to unravel ancestral genome arrangements or undocumented gene interactions.
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