Abstract
Background
Cervids have evolved very successful means for survival and thriving to adapt to various climates and environments. One of these successful means might be the effective and efficient way of communication. To support this notion, cervids are well equipped with a variety of skin glands that distribute in different body regions. However, studies relevant to adaptive evolution in cervids, particularly on olfactory reception at the molecular level, have thus far not been reported.
Objective
To provide valuable insights into molecular evidence for the adaptive evolution of olfactory-related gene in cervids.
Methods
Based on recently sequenced genomes of cervids and closely-related-species, we performed comparative genomic analysis at genome level using bioinformatics tools.
Results
Tree topology strongly supported that Bovidae was the sister group of Moschidae and both formed a branch that was then clustered with Cervidae. Expansion of heavy chain genes of the dynein family and 51 rapidly evolving genes could be associated with adaptation of cilia that serve as sensory organelles and act as cellular antennae. Based on the branch-site model test along the deer branch spanning 7–21 mammalian species, 14 deer olfactory receptor genes were found to be undergoing positive selection pressure and 89 positive selection sites (probability > 60%) had amino acid substitutions unique to deer.
Conclusion
This study, for the first time, provides significant molecular evidence for adaption of olfactory-related genes of cervids according to their olfactory behavior.
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31402035). We wish to thank Dr. Eric Lord for reading through the paper and giving valuable comments.
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13258_2019_911_MOESM2_ESM.xlsx
Table S2 List of 2780 genes with the elevation of the different values of dN/dS in both WT deer/cattle and WT deer/musk deer as compared with musk deer/cattle (XLSX 172.0 kb)
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Ba, H., Qin, T., Cai, Z. et al. Molecular evidence for adaptive evolution of olfactory-related genes in cervids. Genes Genom 42, 355–360 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13258-019-00911-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13258-019-00911-w