Gene Family Expansions in Aphids Maintained by Endosymbiotic and Nonsymbiotic Traits.

ABSTRACT: Facilitating the evolution of new gene functions, gene duplication is a major mechanism driving evolutionary innovation. Gene family expansions relevant to host/symbiont interactions are increasingly being discovered in eukaryotes that host endosymbiotic microbes. Such discoveries entice speculation that gene duplication facilitates the evolution of novel, endosymbiotic relationships. Here, using a comparative transcriptomic approach combined with differential gene expression analysis, we investigate the importance of endosymbiosis in retention of amino acid transporter paralogs in aphid genomes. To pinpoint the timing of amino acid transporter duplications we inferred gene phylogenies for five aphid species and three outgroups. We found that while some duplications arose in the aphid comm

SUBMITTER: Duncan RP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4824201 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature