title: An evolutionary perspective on Elovl5 fatty acid elongase: comparison of Northern pike and duplicated paralogs from Atlantic salmon.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The ability to produce physiologically critical LC-PUFA from dietary fatty acids differs greatly among teleost species, and is dependent on the possession and expression of fatty acyl desaturase and elongase genes. Atlantic salmon, as a result of a recently duplicated genome, have more of these enzymes than other fish. Recent phylogenetic studies show that Northern pike represents the closest extant relative of the preduplicated ancestral salmonid. Here we characterise a pike fatty acyl elongase, elovl5, and compare it to Atlantic salmon elovl5a and elovl5b duplicates.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Phylogenetic analyses show that Atlantic salmon paralogs are evolving symmetrically, and they have been retained in the genome by purifying selection. Heterologous expression in yeast showed that Northern pike Elovl5 activity is indistinguishable from that of the salmon paralogs, efficiently elongating C18 and C20 substrates. However, in contrast to salmon, pike elovl5 was predominantly expressed in brain with negligible expression in liver and intestine.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We suggest that the predominant expression of Elovl5b in salmon liver and Elovl5a in salmon intestine is an adaptation, enabled by genome duplication, to a diet rich in terrestrial invertebrates which are relatively poor in LC-PUFA. Pike have retained an ancestral expression profile which supports the maintenance of PUFA in the brain but, due to a highly piscivorous LC-PUFA-rich diet, is not required in liver and intestine. Thus, the characterisation of elovl5 in Northern pike provides insights into the evolutionary divergence of duplicated genes, and the ecological adaptations of salmonids which have enabled colonisation of nutrient poor freshwaters.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Aquaculture, School of Natural Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland FK9 4LA, UK. g.e.carmonaantonanzas@stir.ac.uk
authors.forename: Greta
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Carmona-Antoñanzas
authors.forename: Douglas R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Tocher
authors.forename: John B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Taggart
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Leaver
mesh_terms: D000123:Acetyltransferases / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D017859:Esocidae / Q000235:genetics*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D000081031:Fatty Acid Elongases; D005231:Fatty Acids, Unsaturated / Q000096:biosynthesis; D020440:Gene Duplication; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009928:Organ Specificity; D010802:Phylogeny; D020317:Salmo salar / Q000235:genetics*; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D013379:Substrate Specificity
chemical_list: D005231:Fatty Acids, Unsaturated; D000123:Acetyltransferases; D000081031:Fatty Acid Elongases