RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 On the origin and evolution of RNA editing in metazoans
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.01.19.911685
DO 10.1101/2020.01.19.911685
A1 Qiye Li
A1 Pei Zhang
A1 Ji Li
A1 Hao Yu
A1 Xiaoyu Zhan
A1 Yuanzhen Zhu
A1 Qunfei Guo
A1 Huishuang Tan
A1 Nina Lundholm
A1 Lydia Garcia
A1 Michael D. Martin
A1 Meritxell Antó Subirats
A1 Yi-Hsien Su
A1 Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo
A1 Mark Q. Martindale
A1 Jr-Kai Yu
A1 M. Thomas P. Gilbert
A1 Guojie Zhang
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/01/19/2020.01.19.911685.abstract
AB Extensive adenosine-to-inosine (A-to-I) editing of nuclear-transcribed RNAs is the hallmark of metazoan transcriptional regulation, and is fundamental to numerous biochemical processes. Here we explore the origin and evolution of this regulatory innovation, by quantifying its prevalence in 22 species that represent all major transitions in metazoan evolution. We provide substantial evidence that extensive RNA editing emerged in the common ancestor of extant metazoans. We find the frequency of RNA editing varies across taxa in a manner independent of metazoan complexity. Nevertheless, cis-acting features that guide A-to-I editing are under strong constraint across all metazoans. RNA editing seems to preserve an ancient mechanism for suppressing the more recently evolved repetitive elements, and is generally nonadaptive in protein-coding regions across metazoans, except for Drosophila and cephalopods. Interestingly, RNA editing preferentially target genes involved in neurotransmission, cellular communication and cytoskeleton, and recodes identical amino acid positions in several conserved genes across diverse taxa, emphasizing broad roles of RNA editing in cellular functions during metazoan evolution that have been previously underappreciated.