High rate of DNA loss in the Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila virilis species groups |
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Authors: | Petrov DA; Hartl DL |
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Institution: | Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. dpetrov@oeb.harvard.edu |
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Abstract: | We recently proposed that patterns of evolution of non-LTR
retrotransposable elements can be used to study patterns of spontaneous
mutation. Transposition of non-LTR retrotransposable elements commonly
results in creation of 5' truncated, "dead-on-arrival" copies. These
inactive copies are effectively pseudogenes and, according to the neutral
theory, their molecular evolution ought to reflect rates and patterns of
spontaneous mutation. Maximum parsimony can be used to separate the
evolution of active lineages of a non-LTR element from the fate of the
"dead-on-arrival" insertions and to directly assess the relative
frequencies of different types of spontaneous mutations. We applied this
approach using a non-LTR element, Helena, in the Drosophila virilis group
and have demonstrated a surprisingly high incidence of large deletions and
the virtual absence of insertions. Based on these results, we suggested
that Drosophila in general may exhibit a high rate of spontaneous large
deletions and have hypothesized that such a high rate of DNA loss may help
to explain the puzzling dearth of bona fide pseudogenes in Drosophila. We
also speculated that variation in the rate of spontaneous deletion may
contribute to the divergence of genome size in different taxa by affecting
the amount of superfluous "junk" DNA such as, for example, pseudogenes or
long introns. In this paper, we extend our analysis to the D. melanogaster
subgroup, which last shared a common ancestor with the D. virilis group
approximately 40 MYA. In a different region of the same transposable
element, Helena, we demonstrate that inactive copies accumulate deletions
in species of the D. melanogaster subgroup at a rate very similar to that
of the D. virilis group. These results strongly suggest that the high rate
of DNA loss is a general feature of Drosophila and not a peculiar property
of a particular stretch of DNA in a particular species group.
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