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MBE Advance Access originally published online on February 25, 2009
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2009 26(5):1103-1116; doi:10.1093/molbev/msp030
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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 Testis TAFs of Drosophila

Victor C. Li*,{dagger}, Jerel C. Davis{dagger}, Kapa Lenkov{dagger}, Benjamin Bolival{ddagger}, Margaret T. Fuller{ddagger} and Dmitri A. Petrov{dagger}

* Harvard Medical School, Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program
{dagger} Department of Biology, Stanford University
{ddagger} Department of Developmental Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine

E-mail: victorli{at}fas.harvard.edu.

Accepted for publication February 3, 2009.

The basal transcription machinery is responsible for initiating transcription at core promoters. During metazoan evolution, its components have expanded in number and diversified to increase the complexity of transcriptional regulation in tissues and developmental stages. To explore the evolutionary events and forces underlying this diversification, we analyzed the evolution of the Drosophila testis TAFs (TBP-associated factors), paralogs of TAFs from the basal transcription factor TFIID that are essential for normal transcription during spermatogenesis of a large set of specific genes involved in terminal differentiation of male gametes. There are five testis-specific TAFs in Drosophila, each expressed only in primary spermatocytes and each a paralog of a different generally expressed TFIID subunit. An examination of the presence of paralogs across taxa as well as molecular clock dating indicates that all five testis TAFs likely arose within a span of ~38 My 63–250 Ma by independent duplication events from their generally expressed paralogs. Furthermore, the evolution of the testis TAFs has been rapid, with apparent further accelerations in multiple Drosophila lineages. Analysis of between-species divergence and intraspecies polymorphism indicates that the major forces of evolution on these genes have been reduced purifying selection, pervasive positive selection, and coevolution. Other genes that exhibit similar patterns of evolution in the Drosophila lineages are also characterized by enriched expression in the testis, suggesting that the pervasive positive selection acting on the tTAFs is likely to be related to their expression in the testis.

Key Words: general transcription machinery • evolutionary diversification • gene duplication • testis TAF • transcription complex origin

Marta Wayne, Associate Editor


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