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Title: Insights into the evolution of the snail superfamily from metazoan wide molecular phylogenies and expression data in annelids

Journal Article · · BMC Evolutionary Biology (Online)
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [2];  [3];  [1]
  1. Université Paris Diderot (France). Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). Inst. Jacques Monod. Programme Development and Neurobiology; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Gif-sur-Yvette (France). Centre de Génétique Moléculaire. Evolution et Développement des Métazoaires; Université Paris Diderot (France). UFR des Sciences du Vivant
  2. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Gif-sur-Yvette (France). Centre de Génétique Moléculaire. Evolution et Développement des Métazoaires
  3. Université Paris Diderot (France). Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). Inst. Jacques Monod. Programme Development and Neurobiology; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Gif-sur-Yvette (France). Centre de Génétique Moléculaire. Evolution et Développement des Métazoaires
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Background: An important issue concerning the evolution of duplicated genes is to understand why paralogous genes are retained in a genome even though the most likely fate for a redundant duplicated gene is nonfunctionalization and thereby its elimination. Here we study a complex superfamily generated by gene duplications, the snail related genes that play key roles during animal development. We investigate the evolutionary history of these genes by genomic, phylogenetic, and expression data studies. Results: We systematically retrieved the full complement of snail related genes in several sequenced genomes. Through phylogenetic analysis, we found that the snail superfamily is composed of three ancestral families, snail, scratchA and scratchB. Analyses of the organization of the encoded proteins point out specific molecular signatures, indicative of functional specificities for Snail, ScratchA and ScratchB proteins. We also report the presence of two snail genes in the annelid Platynereis dumerilii, which have distinct expression patterns in the developing mesoderm, nervous system, and foregut. The combined expression of these two genes is identical to that of two independently duplicated snail genes in another annelid, Capitella spI, but different aspects of the expression patterns are differentially shared among paralogs of Platynereis and Capitella. Conclusion: Our study indicates that the snail and scratchB families have expanded through multiple independent gene duplications in the different bilaterian lineages, and highlights potential functional diversifications of Snail and ScratchB proteins following duplications, as, in several instances, paralogous proteins in a given species show different domain organizations. Comparisons of the expression pattern domains of the two Platynereis and Capitella snail paralogs provide evidence for independent subfunctionalization events which have occurred in these two species. We propose that the snail related genes may be especially prone to subfunctionalization, and this would explain why the snail superfamily underwent so many independent duplications leading to maintenance of functional paralogs.

Research Organization:
USDOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER). Biological Systems Science Division
OSTI ID:
1626387
Journal Information:
BMC Evolutionary Biology (Online), Vol. 9, Issue 1; ISSN 1471-2148
Publisher:
BioMed CentralCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (2)

Genome-Wide Heterogeneity of Nucleotide Substitution Model Fit journal January 2011
Functional analysis of Scratch2 domains: implications in the evolution of Snail transcriptional repressors posted_content January 2018

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Related Subjects

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Evolutionary Biology
Genetics & Heredity