Local recombination and mutation effects on molecular evolution in Drosophila.
I studied the cause of the significant difference in the synonymous-substitution pattern found in the achaete-scute complex genes in two Drosophila lineages, higher codon bias in Drosophila yakuba, and lower bias in D. melanogaster. Besides these genes, the functionally unrelated yellow gene showed the same substitution pattern, suggesting a region-dependent phenomenon in the X-chromosome telomere. Because the numbers of A/T --> G/C substitutions were not significantly different from those of G/C --> A/T in the yellow noncoding regions of these species, a AT/GC mutational bias could not completely account for the synonymous-substitution biases. In contrast, we did find an approximately 14-fold difference in recombination rates in the X-chromosome telomere regions between the two species, suggesting that the reduction of recombination rates in this region resulted in the reduction of the efficacy of selection in D. melanogaster. In addition, the D. orena yellow showed a 5% increase in the G + C content at silent sites in the coding and noncoding regions since the divergence from D. erecta. This pattern was significantly different from those at the orena Adh and Amy loci. These results suggest that local changes in recombination rates and mutational pressures are contributing to the irregular synonymous-substitution patterns in Drosophila.
Takano-Shimizu
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Department of Population Genetics, National Institute of Genetics, Mishima, Shizuoka-ken 411-8540, Japan. totakano@lab.nig.ac.jp
D000818:Animals; D051792:Basic Helix-Loop-Helix Proteins; D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D004247:DNA / Q000235:genetics; D004252:DNA Mutational Analysis; D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D004330:Drosophila / Q000235:genetics*; D029721:Drosophila Proteins; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005819:Genetic Markers; D019476:Insect Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D009154:Mutation; D010802:Phylogeny; D011995:Recombination, Genetic; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000235:genetics; D014960:X Chromosome
D051792:Basic Helix-Loop-Helix Proteins; D004247:DNA; D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins; D029721:Drosophila Proteins; D005819:Genetic Markers; D019476:Insect Proteins; D014157:Transcription Factors; C089199:ac protein, Drosophila