Trends in Ecology & Evolution
OpinionMultigene Family Evolution: Perspectives from Insect Chemoreceptors
Section snippets
Multigene Families: Models for Molecular Evolution
Since Aristotle, scientists have classified organisms into various taxonomic ranks based upon their phenotypic similarities and differences. Such efforts provided a foundation for our understanding of evolution. Analogously, during the past half-century of DNA sequencing the recognition that many genes belong to large families – including those encoding ribosomal RNAs, homeobox (hox) transcription factors, histones, hemoglobins, and major histocompatibility complex proteins 1, 2 – has revealed
Ancient Origins
Defining the origin of multigene families is a fundamental but challenging problem. Because even large superfamilies must presumably have arisen from a single parental gene, knowing when and how they arose can provide general insights into mechanisms of new gene evolution 9, 10. Moreover, understanding their genetic origins can sometimes provide clues to their function, such as those genes that arise by fusion of distinct ancestral loci encoding different protein domains (e.g., ionotropic
Rampant Replication and Emergent Expression
To form multigene families, single founder genes must duplicate and, usually, diverge in sequence. Insect chemoreceptor families, similarly to other gene families, expand and contract by a process of birth-and-death evolution 1, 2, as revealed by the clustered organization of many genes in the genomes of insect and non-insect species 12, 13, 14, 18. Considering both repertoire size and sequence similarity of receptors between individual species, this superfamily appears to be evolving
Revolutionary Roles in Insects and Beyond
Genes multiply to form families for many reasons: to provide sufficient quantities of their products (e.g., ribosomal RNAs), to fulfill distinctive biochemical activities (e.g., hemoglobins), to perform related functions at different times and places during development (e.g., Hox transcription factors), and to afford a range of chemical recognition specificities (e.g., major histocompatibility complex proteins). Insect chemoreceptors clearly fall into this last category. However, do all members
Exploiting, and Understanding, Evolution
The diversity of potential functions of members of this superfamily might simply reflect the adaptability of these ion channels to fulfill any role that couples the presence of a chemical signal on one side of a membrane to a physiological change on the other. Beyond the challenges of determining where members of this superfamily are expressed, and for which processes they are required, a perhaps more difficult problem will be to understand their precise mechanism of action. Do they all act as
Concluding Remarks
For such a vast and important superfamily, it is both sobering and stimulating to reflect on how much we still have to learn about insect chemoreceptors (see Outstanding Questions). Through this brief perspective I have aimed to convey three main messages: first, future insights into the origin of these receptors, their structural and regulatory diversification, and even their 3D conformation, will benefit greatly from evolutionary-based approaches. Second, the significance of this superfamily
Acknowledgments
I apologize to colleagues for being unable to cite all relevant primary literature owing to space constraints. I thank Hugh Robertson for communicating results before publication, Tonni Grube Andersen and Niko Geldner for discussions on plant DUF3537 genes, Jürgen Berger for the Drosophila image, and Roman Arguello, Benoîte Bargeton, Sophie Martin, Lindy McBride, Lucia Prieto-Godino, Hugh Robertson, Marc Robinson-Rechavi, Juan Sanchez, Ana Silbering, and Marcus Stensmyr for comments on the
Glossary
- Birth-and-death evolution
- a model for the process by which multigene families evolve through a combination of gene gain by duplication of DNA segments and gene loss by deletion or other pseudogenization events.
- Domain of unknown function (DUF)
- a protein domain that has no characterized function.
- Evolutionary coupling (EC)
- a signature of co-evolution of a pair of amino acids within the primary sequences of a protein family, which might reflect structural or functional constraints between these
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2022, International Journal of Biological MacromoleculesCitation Excerpt :Fatty acyl-CoA reductases (FARs) have been reported in many different organisms with a range of biological roles [3,4,10,41]. Similar to the evolutionary mode of insect chemoreception proteins (gustatory receptors, odorant receptors and odorant-binding proteins), the FAR gene family in insects undergoes extensive expansion and loss, thus following “the birth-and-death evolutionary model” [8,42]. Although many FARs have been covered in insects, there is little work on the function of FAR in insect embryogenesis.
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