Variation of presence/absence genes among Arabidopsis populations

Background

One of the main issues of molecular evolution is to divulge the principles in dictating the evolutionary rate differences among various gene classes. Immunological genes have received considerable attention in evolutionary biology as candidates for local adaptation and for studying functionally important polymorphisms. The normal structure and function of immunological genes will be distorted when they experience mutations leading to immunological dysfunctions.

Results

Here, we examined the fundamental differences between the genes which on mutation give rise to autoimmune or other immune system related diseases and the immunological genes that do not cause any disease phenotypes. Although the disease genes examined are analogous to non-disease genes in product, expression, function, and pathway affiliation, a statistically significant decrease in evolutionary rate has been found in autoimmune disease genes relative to all other immune related diseases and non-disease genes. Possible ways of accumulation of mutation in the three steps of the central dogma (DNA-mRNA-Protein) have been studied to trace the mutational effects predisposed to disease consequence and acquiring higher selection pressure. Principal Component Analysis and Multivariate Regression Analysis have established the predominant role of single nucleotide polymorphisms in guiding the evolutionary rate of immunological disease and non-disease genes followed by m-RNA abundance, paralogs number, fraction of phosphorylation residue, alternatively spliced exon, protein residue burial and protein disorder.

Conclusions

Our study provides an empirical insight into the etiology of autoimmune disease genes and other immunological diseases. The immediate utility of our study is to help in disease gene identification and may also help in medicinal improvement of immune related disease.     

Peeling the yeast protein network

A set of highly connected proteins (or hubs) plays an important role for the integrity of the protein interaction network of Saccharomyces cerevisae by connecting the network's intrinsic modules. The importance of the hubs' central placement is further confirmed by their propensity to be lethal. However, although highly emphasized, little is known about the topological coherence among the hubs. Applying a core decomposition method which allows us to identify the inherent layer structure of the protein interaction network, we find that the probability of nodes both being essential and evolutionary conserved successively increases toward the innermost cores. While connectivity alone is often not a sufficient criterion to assess a protein's functional, evolutionary and topological relevance, we classify nodes as globally and locally central depending on their appearance in the inner or outer cores. The observation that globally central proteins participate in a substantial number of protein complexes which display an elevated degree of evolutionary conservation allows us to hypothesize that globally central proteins serve as the evolutionary backbone of the proteome. Even though protein interaction data are extensively flawed, we find that our results are very robust against inaccurately determined protein interactions.     

Evolutionary rate heterogeneity between multi- and single-interface hubs across human housekeeping and tissue-specific protein interaction network: Insights from proteins' and its partners' properties

Integrating gene expression into protein-protein interaction network (PPIN) leads to the construction of tissue-specific (TS) and housekeeping (HK) sub-networks, with distinctive TS- and HK-hubs. All such hub proteins are divided into multi-interface (MI) hubs and single-interface (SI) hubs, where MI hubs evolve slower than SI hubs. Here we explored the evolutionary rate difference between MI and SI proteins within TS- and HK-PPIN and observed that this difference is present only in TS, but not in HK-class. Next, we explored whether proteins' own properties or its partners' properties are more influential in such evolutionary discrepancy. Statistical analyses revealed that this evolutionary rate correlates negatively with protein's own properties like expression level, miRNA count, conformational diversity and functional properties and with its partners' properties like protein disorder and tissue expression similarity. Moreover, partial correlation and regression analysis revealed that both proteins' and its partners' properties have independent effects on protein evolutionary rate.     

Erosion of interaction networks in reduced and degraded genomes

Unlike eukaryotes, which often recruit duplicated genes into existing protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks, the low levels of gene duplication coupled with the high probability of lateral transfer of novel genes alters the manner in which PPI networks can evolve in bacteria. By inferring the PPIs present in the ancestor to contemporary Gammaproteobacteria, we were able to trace the changes in gene repertoires, and their consequences on PPI network evolution, in several bacterial lineages that have independently undergone reductions in genome size and genome contents. As genomes degrade, virtually all multi-partner proteins have lost interactors; however, the overall average number of connections increases due to the preferential elimination of proteins that interact with only one other protein partner. We also studied the effect of lateral gene transfer on PPI network evolution by analyzing the connectivity of genes that have been gained along the Escherichia coli lineage, as well as those acquired genes subsequently silenced in Shigella flexneri, since diverging from the gammaproteobacterial ancestor. The situation in PPI networks, in which newly acquired genes preferentially attach to the hubs of the network, contrasts that observed in metabolic networks, which evolve by the peripheral gain and loss of genes, and in regulatory networks, in which high connectivity increases the propensity of loss.     

Clustering and conservation patterns of human microRNAs

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are ~22 nt-long non-coding RNA molecules, believed to play important roles in gene regulation. We present a comprehensive analysis of the conservation and clustering patterns of known miRNAs in human. We show that human miRNA gene clustering is significantly higher than expected at random. A total of 37% of the known human miRNA genes analyzed in this study appear in clusters of two or more with pairwise chromosomal distances of at most 3000 nt. Comparison of the miRNA sequences with their homologs in four other organisms reveals a typical conservation pattern, persistent throughout the clusters. Furthermore, we show enrichment in the typical conservation patterns and other miRNA-like properties in the vicinity of known miRNA genes, compared with random genomic regions. This may imply that additional, yet unknown, miRNAs reside in these regions, consistent with the current recognition that there are overlooked miRNAs. Indeed, by comparing our predictions with cloning results and with identified miRNA genes in other mammals, we corroborate the predictions of 18 additional human miRNA genes in the vicinity of the previously known ones. Our study raises the proportion of clustered human miRNAs that are <3000 nt apart to 42%. This suggests that the clustering of miRNA genes is higher than currently acknowledged, alluding to its evolutionary and functional implications.     

The role of disorder in interaction networks: a structural analysis

Recent studies have emphasized the value of including structural information into the topological analysis of protein networks. Here, we utilized structural information to investigate the role of intrinsic disorder in these networks. Hub proteins tend to be more disordered than other proteins (i.e. the proteome average); however, we find this only true for those with one or two binding interfaces (‘single’‐interface hubs). In contrast, the distribution of disordered residues in multi‐interface hubs is indistinguishable from the overall proteome. Surprisingly, we find that the binding interfaces in single‐interface hubs are highly structured, as is the case for multi‐interface hubs. However, the binding partners of single‐interface hubs tend to have a higher level of disorder than the proteome average, suggesting that their binding promiscuity is related to the disorder of their binding partners. In turn, the higher level of disorder of single‐interface hubs can be partly explained by their tendency to bind to each other in a cascade. A good illustration of this trend can be found in signaling pathways and, more specifically, in kinase cascades. Finally, our findings have implications for the current controversy related to party and date‐hubs.     

Modification of gene duplicability during the evolution of protein interaction network

Duplications of genes encoding highly connected and essential proteins are selected against in several species but not in human, where duplicated genes encode highly connected proteins. To understand when and how gene duplicability changed in evolution, we compare gene and network properties in four species (Escherichia coli, yeast, fly, and human) that are representative of the increase in evolutionary complexity, defined as progressive growth in the number of genes, cells, and cell types. We find that the origin and conservation of a gene significantly correlates with the properties of the encoded protein in the protein-protein interaction network. All four species preserve a core of singleton and central hubs that originated early in evolution, are highly conserved, and accomplish basic biological functions. Another group of hubs appeared in metazoans and duplicated in vertebrates, mostly through vertebrate-specific whole genome duplication. Such recent and duplicated hubs are frequently targets of microRNAs and show tissue-selective expression, suggesting that these are alternative mechanisms to control their dosage. Our study shows how networks modified during evolution and contributes to explaining the occurrence of somatic genetic diseases, such as cancer, in terms of network perturbations.     

Comparative analysis of human and mouse expression data illuminates tissue-specific evolutionary patterns of miRNAs

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) constitute an important class of gene regulators. While models have been proposed to explain their appearance and expansion, the validation of these models has been difficult due to the lack of comparative studies. Here, we analyze miRNA evolutionary patterns in two mammals, human and mouse, in relation to the age of miRNA families. In this comparative framework, we confirm some predictions of previously advanced models of miRNA evolution, e.g. that miRNAs arise more frequently de novo than by duplication, or that the number of protein-coding gene targeted by miRNAs decreases with evolutionary time. We also corroborate that miRNAs display an increase in expression level with evolutionary time, however we show that this relation is largely tissue-dependent, and especially low in embryonic or nervous tissues. We identify a bias of tag-sequencing techniques regarding the assessment of breadth of expression, leading us, contrary to predictions, to find more tissue-specific expression of older miRNAs. Together, our results refine the models used so far to depict the evolution of miRNA genes. They underline the role of tissue-specific selective forces on the evolution of miRNAs, as well as the potential co-evolution patterns between miRNAs and the protein-coding genes they target.     

Adaptive evolution of testis-specific,recently evolved,clustered miRNAs in Drosophila

The propensity of animal miRNAs to regulate targets bearing modest complementarity, most notably via pairing with miRNA positions ∼2–8 (the “seed”), is believed to drive major aspects of miRNA evolution. First, minimal targeting requirements have allowed most conserved miRNAs to acquire large target cohorts, thus imposing strong selection on miRNAs to maintain their seed sequences. Second, the modest pairing needed for repression suggests that evolutionarily nascent miRNAs may generally induce net detrimental, rather than beneficial, regulatory effects. Hence, levels and activities of newly emerged miRNAs are expected to be limited to preserve the status quo of gene expression. In this study, we unexpectedly show that Drosophila testes specifically express a substantial miRNA population that contravenes these tenets. We find that multiple genomic clusters of testis-restricted miRNAs harbor recently evolved miRNAs, whose experimentally verified orthologs exhibit divergent sequences, even within seed regions. Moreover, this class of miRNAs exhibits higher expression and greater phenotypic capacities in transgenic misexpression assays than do non-testis-restricted miRNAs of similar evolutionary age. These observations suggest that these testis-restricted miRNAs may be evolving adaptively, and several methods of evolutionary analysis provide strong support for this notion. Consistent with this, proof-of-principle tests show that orthologous miRNAs with divergent seeds can distinguish target sensors in a species-cognate manner. Finally, we observe that testis-restricted miRNA clusters exhibit extraordinary dynamics of miRNA gene flux in other Drosophila species. Altogether, our findings reveal a surprising tissue-directed influence of miRNA evolution, involving a distinct mode of miRNA function connected to adaptive gene regulation in the testis.     

Systematic analysis of genomic organization and heterogeneities of miRNA cluster in vertebrates

The clustering propensity of microRNA genes is a common biological phenomenon in various animal and plant species. To gain novel insight into genomic organization and potential functional heterogeneities of miRNA clusters in vertebrates from a genome scale, we used large scale data and presented a comprehensive analysis to examine various features of genomic organization of miRNA clusters across seven vertebrates by a combination of comparative genomics and bioinformatics approaches. The results of pair-wise distance analysis of same-strand consecutive miRNAs suggested that the fractions of the miRNA gene pairs are higher at relatively short pair-wise distances than those of protein-coding genes and other non-coding RNA genes. Especially relatively small number of miRNAs is more clustered at very short pair-wise distances than expected at random. We further observed significant difference between real miRNA clusters and randomly organized clusters for different aspects, including higher overlap of target genes, fewer seed types and significant enrichment in diseases. However, the extent of these features of clustered miRNAs has a different tendency and largely depends on inter-miRNA distances because of diverse clustering propensity of miRNAs in vertebrates, suggesting that this cooperated function or cooperative effects between miRNAs in clusters perhaps be affected by inter-miRNA distances.     

Identification of conserved microRNAs and their target genes in tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum)

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of non-coding RNAs that have important gene regulation roles in various organisms. To date, a total of 1279 plant miRNAs have been deposited in the miRNA miRBase database (Release 10.1). Many of them are conserved during the evolution of land plants suggesting that the well-conserved miRNAs may also retain homologous target interactions. Recently, little is known about the experimental or computational identification of conserved miRNAs and their target genes in tomato. Here, using a computational homology search approach, 21 conserved miRNAs were detected in the Expressed Sequence Tags (EST) and Genomic Survey Sequence (GSS) databases. Following this, 57 potential target genes were predicted by searching the mRNA database. Most of the target mRNAs appeared to be involved in plant growth and development. Our findings verified that the well-conserved tomato miRNAs have retained homologous target interactions amongst divergent plant species. Some miRNAs express diverse combinations in different cell types and have been shown to regulate cell-specific target genes coordinately. We believe that the targeting propensity for genes in different biological processes can be explained largely by their protein connectivity.     

Species-Specific Expression of Full-Length and Alternatively Spliced Variant Forms of CDK5RAP2

CDK5RAP2 is one of the primary microcephaly genes that are associated with reduced brain size and mental retardation. We have previously shown that human CDK5RAP2 exists as a full-length form (hCDK5RAP2) or an alternatively spliced variant form (hCDK5RAP2-V1) that is lacking exon 32. The equivalent of hCDK5RAP2-V1 has been reported in rat and mouse but the presence of full-length equivalent hCDK5RAP2 in rat and mouse has not been examined. Here, we demonstrate that rat expresses both a full length and an alternatively spliced variant form of CDK5RAP2 that are equivalent to our previously reported hCDK5RAP2 and hCDK5RAP2-V1, repectively. However, mouse expresses only one form of CDK5RAP2 that is equivalent to the human and rat alternatively spliced variant forms. Knowledge of this expression of different forms of CDK5RAP2 in human, rat and mouse is essential in selecting the appropriate model for studies of CDK5RAP2 and primary microcephaly but our findings further indicate the evolutionary divergence of mouse from the human and rat species.