MBE Advance Access published online on March 1, 2007
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msm038
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© 2007 The Authors
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Research Article |
Molecular Evolution of Drosophila Odorant Receptor Genes
a Department of Biology
b Penn Center for Bioinformatics
c Genomics and Computational Biology Graduate Group, University of Pennsylvania
Corresponding Author: Junhyong Kim, Department of Biology, 415 S. University Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19104, 215-745-5187, 215-898-8780 (fax), Junhyong{at}sas.upenn.edu
Received for publication October 24, 2006. Revision received February 7, 2007. Accepted for publication February 26, 2007.
A total of 752 odorant receptor (Or) genes, including pseudogenes, were identified in eleven Drosophila species and named after their orthologs in D. melanogaster. The 813 Or genes, including 61 from D. melanogaster, were classified into 59 orthologous groups that are well supported by gene phylogeny. By reconciling with the gene family phylogeny, we estimated the number of gene duplication/loss events and intron gain/loss events in the species phylogeny. We found that these events are particularly frequent in D. grimshawi, D. willistoni and in the obscura group. More than half of the duplicated genes stay as tandem arrays, whose size range from two to eight. These genes vary in sequence and some likely underwent positive selection, indicating gene duplication was important for flies to acquire new olfactory functions. We hypothesize that Or genes conferred the basic olfactory repertoire to ancestral flies before the speciation of the Drosophila and Sophophora subgenera about 40 million years ago. This repertoire has been largely maintained in the current species, while lineage-specific gene duplication seems to have led to additional specialization in some species in response to specific ecological conditions.
Key Words: Drosophila • Odorant Receptor • Molecular Evolution • Phylogeny • Duplication
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