{"title":"Expansions and contractions in gene families of independently-evolved blood-feeding insects.","authors":"Lucas Freitas, Mariana F Nery","doi":"10.1186/s12862-020-01650-3","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>The blood-feeding behavior evolved multiple times in Insecta lineages and it represents an excellent opportunity to study patterns of convergent molecular evolution regarding this habit. In insects the expansion of some gene families is linked with blood-feeding behavior, but a wide study comparing the evolution of these gene families among different lineages is still missing. Here we gathered genomic data from six independently-evolved hematophagous lineages, aiming to identify convergent expansions and/or contractions of gene families in hematophagous lineages of insects.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>We found four rapidly evolving gene families shared by at least two hematophagous independently-evolved lineages, including a heat-shock and a chemosensory protein. On the expression of these four rapidly evolving gene families we found more genes expressed in mated individuals compared with virgin individuals in rapidly-expanded families and more genes expressed in non-blood-feeding individuals compared with blood-feeding individuals in rapidly-contracted families.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Our results reveal a new set of candidate genes to be explored in further analysis to help the development of new strategies to deal with blood-feeding vectors and also presents a new perspective to study the evolution of hematophagy identifying convergent molecular patterns.</p>","PeriodicalId":9111,"journal":{"name":"BMC Evolutionary Biology","volume":"20 1","pages":"87"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4000,"publicationDate":"2020-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7367253/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"BMC Evolutionary Biology","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-020-01650-3","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"Agricultural and Biological Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: The blood-feeding behavior evolved multiple times in Insecta lineages and it represents an excellent opportunity to study patterns of convergent molecular evolution regarding this habit. In insects the expansion of some gene families is linked with blood-feeding behavior, but a wide study comparing the evolution of these gene families among different lineages is still missing. Here we gathered genomic data from six independently-evolved hematophagous lineages, aiming to identify convergent expansions and/or contractions of gene families in hematophagous lineages of insects.
Results: We found four rapidly evolving gene families shared by at least two hematophagous independently-evolved lineages, including a heat-shock and a chemosensory protein. On the expression of these four rapidly evolving gene families we found more genes expressed in mated individuals compared with virgin individuals in rapidly-expanded families and more genes expressed in non-blood-feeding individuals compared with blood-feeding individuals in rapidly-contracted families.
Conclusion: Our results reveal a new set of candidate genes to be explored in further analysis to help the development of new strategies to deal with blood-feeding vectors and also presents a new perspective to study the evolution of hematophagy identifying convergent molecular patterns.
期刊介绍:
BMC Evolutionary Biology is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that considers articles on all aspects of molecular and non-molecular evolution of all organisms, as well as phylogenetics and palaeontology.