Conservation and selective pressures shaping baleen whale olfactory receptor genes supports their use of olfaction in the marine environment
Abstract The relative importance of various sensory modalities can shift in response to evolutionary transitions, resulting in changes to underlying gene families encoding their reception systems. The rapid birth‐and‐death process underlying the evolution of the large olfactory receptor (OR) gene fa...
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Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/mec.17497 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/mec.17497 |
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crwiley:10.1111/mec.17497 2024-09-30T14:32:45+00:00 Conservation and selective pressures shaping baleen whale olfactory receptor genes supports their use of olfaction in the marine environment Jauhal, April A. Constantine, Rochelle Newcomb, Richard Auckland Council Society for Marine Mammalogy 2024 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/mec.17497 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/mec.17497 en eng Wiley http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Molecular Ecology volume 33, issue 18 ISSN 0962-1083 1365-294X journal-article 2024 crwiley https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.17497 2024-09-11T04:10:35Z Abstract The relative importance of various sensory modalities can shift in response to evolutionary transitions, resulting in changes to underlying gene families encoding their reception systems. The rapid birth‐and‐death process underlying the evolution of the large olfactory receptor (OR) gene family has accelerated genomic‐level change for the sense of smell in particular. The transition from the land to sea in marine mammals is an attractive model for understanding the influence of habitat shifts on sensory systems, with the retained OR repertoire of baleen whales contrasting with its loss in toothed whales. In this study, we examine to what extent the transition from a terrestrial to a marine environment has influenced the evolution of baleen whale OR repertoires. We developed Gene Mining Pipeline (GMPipe) ( https://github.com/AprilJauhal/GMPipe ), which can accurately identify large numbers of candidate OR genes. GMPipe identified 707 OR sequences from eight baleen whale species. These repertoires exhibited distinct family count distributions compared to terrestrial mammals, including signs of relative expansion in families OR10, OR11 and OR13. While many receptors have been lost or show signs of random drift in baleen whales, others exhibit signs of evolving under purifying or positive selection. Over 85% of OR genes could be sorted into orthologous groups of sequences containing at least four homologous sequences. Many of these groups, particularly from family OR10, presented signs of relative expansion and purifying selective pressure. Overall, our results suggest that the relatively small size of baleen whale OR repertoires result from specialisation to novel olfactory landscapes, as opposed to random drift. Article in Journal/Newspaper baleen whale baleen whales toothed whales Wiley Online Library Molecular Ecology 33 18 |
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Wiley Online Library |
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English |
description |
Abstract The relative importance of various sensory modalities can shift in response to evolutionary transitions, resulting in changes to underlying gene families encoding their reception systems. The rapid birth‐and‐death process underlying the evolution of the large olfactory receptor (OR) gene family has accelerated genomic‐level change for the sense of smell in particular. The transition from the land to sea in marine mammals is an attractive model for understanding the influence of habitat shifts on sensory systems, with the retained OR repertoire of baleen whales contrasting with its loss in toothed whales. In this study, we examine to what extent the transition from a terrestrial to a marine environment has influenced the evolution of baleen whale OR repertoires. We developed Gene Mining Pipeline (GMPipe) ( https://github.com/AprilJauhal/GMPipe ), which can accurately identify large numbers of candidate OR genes. GMPipe identified 707 OR sequences from eight baleen whale species. These repertoires exhibited distinct family count distributions compared to terrestrial mammals, including signs of relative expansion in families OR10, OR11 and OR13. While many receptors have been lost or show signs of random drift in baleen whales, others exhibit signs of evolving under purifying or positive selection. Over 85% of OR genes could be sorted into orthologous groups of sequences containing at least four homologous sequences. Many of these groups, particularly from family OR10, presented signs of relative expansion and purifying selective pressure. Overall, our results suggest that the relatively small size of baleen whale OR repertoires result from specialisation to novel olfactory landscapes, as opposed to random drift. |
author2 |
Auckland Council Society for Marine Mammalogy |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Jauhal, April A. Constantine, Rochelle Newcomb, Richard |
spellingShingle |
Jauhal, April A. Constantine, Rochelle Newcomb, Richard Conservation and selective pressures shaping baleen whale olfactory receptor genes supports their use of olfaction in the marine environment |
author_facet |
Jauhal, April A. Constantine, Rochelle Newcomb, Richard |
author_sort |
Jauhal, April A. |
title |
Conservation and selective pressures shaping baleen whale olfactory receptor genes supports their use of olfaction in the marine environment |
title_short |
Conservation and selective pressures shaping baleen whale olfactory receptor genes supports their use of olfaction in the marine environment |
title_full |
Conservation and selective pressures shaping baleen whale olfactory receptor genes supports their use of olfaction in the marine environment |
title_fullStr |
Conservation and selective pressures shaping baleen whale olfactory receptor genes supports their use of olfaction in the marine environment |
title_full_unstemmed |
Conservation and selective pressures shaping baleen whale olfactory receptor genes supports their use of olfaction in the marine environment |
title_sort |
conservation and selective pressures shaping baleen whale olfactory receptor genes supports their use of olfaction in the marine environment |
publisher |
Wiley |
publishDate |
2024 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/mec.17497 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/mec.17497 |
genre |
baleen whale baleen whales toothed whales |
genre_facet |
baleen whale baleen whales toothed whales |
op_source |
Molecular Ecology volume 33, issue 18 ISSN 0962-1083 1365-294X |
op_rights |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.17497 |
container_title |
Molecular Ecology |
container_volume |
33 |
container_issue |
18 |
_version_ |
1811636812386402304 |