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MBE Advance Access originally published online on February 27, 2009
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2009 26(6):1273-1287; doi:10.1093/molbev/msp039
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Research Articles

Molecular Evolution of the Drosophila Retinome: Exceptional Gene Gain in the Higher Diptera

Riyue Bao* and Markus Friedrich*,{dagger}

* Department of Biological Sciences, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
{dagger} Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Wayne State University, School of Medicine, Detroit, MI

E-mail: friedrichm{at}wayne.edu.

Accepted for publication February 19, 2009.

Using genomic information from mosquito, red flour beetle, honeybee, mouse, and sea anemone, we have studied the molecular evolution of 91 Drosophila genes involved in eye primordium determination, retinal differentiation, and phototransduction. Our results show that the majority of these gene sequences predate the diversification of endopterygote insects. However, all three functional groups contain a conspicuous fraction of evolutionarily younger genes, which originated by tandem duplication in the lineage leading to Drosophila, whereas gene duplications are rare in other insect lineages. We conclude that the retention of duplicated genes spiked during the early diversification of the higher Diptera possibly due to an extended period of exceptional population size reduction. Genetic data suggest that gene duplication played an important role in the evolution of visual performance in the fast flying higher Diptera by spatial or intracellular subfunctionalization. Developmental gene duplications, by contrast, predominantly retained overlapping expression patterns and preserved partial to complete redundancy consistent with a role in boosting developmental robustness.

Key Words: opsin • inaC • inaF • wunen • lazaro • gene duplication • Drosophila • phototransduction • eye development • redundancy • intracellular subfunctionalization

William Jeffery, Associate Editor


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