Convergent evolution of the genomes of marine mammals

Andrew D. Foote; Yue Liu; Gregg W.C. Thomas; Tomáš Vinař; Jessica Alföldi; Jixin Deng; Shannon Dugan; Cornelis E. van Elk; Margaret Hunter; Vandita Joshi; Ziad Khan; Christie Kovar; Sandra L. Lee; Kerstin Lindblad-Toh; Annalaura Mancia; Rasmus Nielsen; Xiang Qin; Jiaxin Qu; Brian J. Raney; Nagarjun Vijay; Jochen B. W. Wolf; Matthew W. Hahn; Donna M. Muzny; Kim C. Worley; M. Thomas P. Gilbert; Richard A. Gibbs

doi:10.1038/ng.3198

Convergent evolution of the genomes of marine mammals

Nature Genetics

By: Andrew D. Foote, Yue Liu, Gregg W.C. Thomas, Tomáš Vinař, Jessica Alföldi, Jixin Deng, Shannon Dugan, Cornelis E. van Elk, Margaret Hunter, Vandita Joshi, Ziad Khan, Christie Kovar, Sandra L. Lee, Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, Annalaura Mancia, Rasmus Nielsen, Xiang Qin, Jiaxin Qu, Brian J. Raney, Nagarjun Vijay, Jochen B. W. Wolf, Matthew W. Hahn, Donna M. Muzny, Kim C. Worley, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, and Richard A. Gibbs

https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.3198

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Abstract

Marine mammals from different mammalian orders share several phenotypic traits adapted to the aquatic environment and therefore represent a classic example of convergent evolution. To investigate convergent evolution at the genomic level, we sequenced and performed de novo assembly of the genomes of three species of marine mammals (the killer whale, walrus and manatee) from three mammalian orders that share independently evolved phenotypic adaptations to a marine existence. Our comparative genomic analyses found that convergent amino acid substitutions were widespread throughout the genome and that a subset of these substitutions were in genes evolving under positive selection and putatively associated with a marine phenotype. However, we found higher levels of convergent amino acid substitutions in a control set of terrestrial sister taxa to the marine mammals. Our results suggest that, whereas convergent molecular evolution is relatively common, adaptive molecular convergence linked to phenotypic convergence is comparatively rare.

Additional publication details
Publication type	Article
Publication Subtype	Journal Article
Title	Convergent evolution of the genomes of marine mammals
Series title	Nature Genetics
DOI	10.1038/ng.3198
Volume	47
Issue	3
Year Published	2015
Language	English
Publisher	Nature Publishing Group
Publisher location	New York, NY
Contributing office(s)	Southeast Ecological Science Center
Description	4 p.
First page	272
Last page	275
Online Only (Y/N)	N
Additional Online Files (Y/N)	N
Google Analytic Metrics	Metrics page