Genomic signatures of globally enhanced gene duplicate accumulation in the megadiverse higher Diptera fueling intralocus sexual conflict resolution

Riyue Bao; Markus Friedrich

doi:10.7717/peerj.10012

Genomic signatures of globally enhanced gene duplicate accumulation in the megadiverse higher Diptera fueling intralocus sexual conflict resolution

PeerJ. 2020 Oct 12:8:e10012. doi: 10.7717/peerj.10012. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Riyue Bao^{1

2}, Markus Friedrich^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Hillman Cancer Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
² Department of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
³ Department of Biological Sciences, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA.
⁴ School of Medicine, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA.

Abstract

Gene duplication is an important source of evolutionary innovation. To explore the relative impact of gene duplication during the diversification of major insect model system lineages, we performed a comparative analysis of lineage-specific gene duplications in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster (Diptera: Brachycera), the mosquito Anopheles gambiae (Diptera: Culicomorpha), the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum (Coleoptera), and the honeybee Apis mellifera (Hymenoptera). Focusing on close to 6,000 insect core gene families containing maximally six paralogs, we detected a conspicuously higher number of lineage-specific duplications in Drosophila (689) compared to Anopheles (315), Tribolium (386), and Apis (223). Based on analyses of sequence divergence, phylogenetic distribution, and gene ontology information, we present evidence that an increased background rate of gene duplicate accumulation played an exceptional role during the diversification of the higher Diptera (Brachycera), in part by providing enriched opportunities for intralocus sexual conflict resolution, which may have boosted speciation rates during the early radiation of the megadiverse brachyceran subclade Schizophora.

Keywords: Brachycera; Drosophila; Energy metabolism; Gene duplication; Genome evolution; Hexokinase; Hsp60; Sexual conflict resolution; Speciation; Thioredoxin.

Grants and funding

Riyue Bao was supported by Thomas C. Competitive Rumble University Graduate Fellowship and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Enhancement GRA Scholarship. This project was supported by NSF award EF-0334948. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.