Positive selection drives the evolution of a primate bitter taste receptor gene.

ABSTRACT: Bitter taste perception is important in food choice of animals, and it is mediated by bitter taste receptor (T2R) containing three regions: extracellular regions (ECs), transmembrane regions (TMs), and intracellular regions (ICs). It is hypothesized that ECs, TMs, and ICs are under different selective pressures, with ECs being unstable while TMs and ICs being constrained. To test this hypothesis, we examined the selective pressures on one of the bitter taste receptor genes-T2R1 and its different areas from 35 primates and found that T2R1 was under neutral evolution but with some positively selected sites in it. Further analyses suggested that TMs, ICs, and the concatenated transmembrane region TM1237 were under purifying selection; in contrast, extracellular regions, the firs

SUBMITTER: Dong X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8131804 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature