title: The evolutionary landscape of intergenic trans-splicing events in insects.
abstract: To explore the landscape of intergenic trans-splicing events and characterize their functions and evolutionary dynamics, we conduct a mega-data study of a phylogeny containing eight species across five orders of class Insecta, a model system spanning 400 million years of evolution. A total of 1,627 trans-splicing events involving 2,199 genes are identified, accounting for 1.58% of the total genes. Homology analysis reveals that mod(mdg4)-like trans-splicing is the only conserved event that is consistently observed in multiple species across two orders, which represents a unique case of functional diversification involving trans-splicing. Thus, evolutionarily its potential for generating proteins with novel function is not broadly utilized by insects. Furthermore, 146 non-mod trans-spliced transcripts are found to resemble canonical genes from different species. Trans-splicing preserving the function of 'breakup' genes may serve as a general mechanism for relaxing the constraints on gene structure, with profound implications for the evolution of genes and genomes.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200032, China.
authors.forename: Yimeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200032, China.
authors.forename: Hongxia
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200032, China.
authors.forename: Yao
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200032, China.
authors.forename: Longxian
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Molecular Virology and Immunology, Institute Pasteur of Shanghai, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China.
authors.forename: Pei
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hao
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology, Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200032, China.
authors.forename: Xuan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D019476:Insect Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D007313:Insecta / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D008957:Models, Genetic; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D020040:Trans-Splicing
chemical_list: D019476:Insect Proteins