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MBE Advance Access published online on August 21, 2006
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msl094
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© The Author 2006. 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
Accepted August 14, 2006

Research Article

Intron Length Evolution in Drosophila

Daven C. Presgraves 1 *

1 Department of Molecular Biology & Genetics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 14850, U.S.A.; Department of Biology, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, 14627, U.S.A.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Daven C. Presgraves, E-mail: dvnp{at}mail.rochester.edu


  Abstract

I present data on the evolution of intron lengths among three closely related Drosophila species, D. melanogaster, D. simulans and D. yakuba. Using D. yakuba as an outgroup, I mapped insertion and deletion mutations in 148 introns (spanning ~30 kb) to the D. melanogaster and D. simulans lineages. Intron length evolution in the two sister species has been different: in D. melanogaster, X-linked introns have increased slightly in size while autosomal ones have decreased slightly in size; in D. simulans, both X-linked and autosomal introns have decreased in size. To understand the possible evolutionary causes of these lineage and chromosome-specific patterns of intron evolution, I studied indel polymorphism and divergence in D. melanogaster. Small insertion mutations segregate at elevated frequencies and enjoy elevated probabilities of fixation, particularly on the X chromosome. In contrast, there is no detectable X chromosome effect on fixations in D. simulans. These findings suggest X chromosome-specific selection or biased gene conversion-gap repair favoring insertions in D. melanogaster but not in D. simulans. These chromosome- and lineage-specific patterns of indel substitution are not easily explained by existing general population genetic models of intron length evolution. Genomic data from D. melanogaster further suggest that the forces described here affect introns and intergenic regions similarly.

Keywords: Drosophila melanogaster; Drosophila simulans; intron; insertion; deletion; indel.
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