Introgression between highly divergent sea squirt genomes: an adaptive breakthrough?

• Published in: Peer Community Journal
• Main Authors: Fraïsse, Christelle, Le Moan, Alan, Roux, Camille, Dubois, Guillaume, Daguin-Thiébaut, Claire, Gagnaire, Pierre-Alexandre, Viard, Frédérique, Bierne, Nicolas
• Other Authors: Évolution, Écologie et Paléontologie (Evo-Eco-Paleo) - UMR 8198 (Evo-Eco-Paléo (EEP)), Université de Lille-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier (UMR ISEM), Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (Cirad)-École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Institut de recherche pour le développement IRD : UR226-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Montpellier (UM), Adaptation et diversité en milieu marin (ADMM), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Station biologique de Roscoff = Roscoff Marine Station (SBR), Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Göteborgs Universitet = University of Gothenburg (GU)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2022
• Subjects: ascidians; trio-based genome phasing; anthropogenic hybridization; introgression hotspot; cytochrome P450; [SDV.BID.EVO]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Biodiversity/Populations and Evolution [q-bio.PE]; [SDV.GEN.GA]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Genetics/Animal genetics; [SDV.BA.ZI]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Animal biology/Invertebrate Zoology; Northeast Atlantic
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-03817700; https://hal.science/hal-03817700/document; https://hal.science/hal-03817700/file/Fraisse_2022_PCIJournal.pdf; https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.172

International audience Human-mediated introductions are reshuffling species distribution on a global scale. Consequently, an increasing number of allopatric taxa are now brought into contact, promoting introgressive hybridization between incompletely isolated species and new adaptive gene transfer. The broadcast spawning marine species, Ciona robusta, has been recently introduced in the native range of its sister taxa, Ciona intestinalis, in the English Channel and NorthEast Atlantic. These sea squirts are highly divergent, yet hybridization has been reported by crossing experiments and genetic studies in the wild. Here, we examined the consequences of secondary contact between C. intestinalis and C. robusta in the English Channel. We produced genomes phased by transmission to infer the history of divergence and gene flow, and analyzed introgressed genomic tracts. Demographic inference revealed a history of secondary contact with a low overall rate of introgression. Introgressed tracts were short, segregating at low frequency, and scattered throughout the genome, suggesting traces of past contacts during the last 30 ky. However, we also uncovered a hotspot of introgression on chromosome 5, characterized by several hundred kb-long C. robusta haplotypes segregating in C. intestinalis, that introgressed during contemporary times the last 75 years. Although locally more frequent than the baseline level of introgression, C. robusta alleles are not fixed, even in the core region of the introgression hotspot. Still, linkage-disequilibrium patterns and haplotype-based tests suggest this genomic region is under recent positive selection. We further detected in the hotspot an over-representation of candidate SNPs lying on a cytochrome P450 gene with a high copy number of tandem repeats in the introgressed alleles. Cytochromes P450 are a superfamily of enzymes involved in detoxifying exogenous compounds, constituting a promising avenue for functional studies. These findings support that introgression of an adaptive ...