TY - JOUR
T1 - Coding sequence divergence between two closely related plant species
T2 - Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica rapa ssp. pekinensis
AU - Tiffin, Peter
AU - Hahn, Matthew W.
PY - 2002/6/4
Y1 - 2002/6/4
N2 - To characterize the coding-sequence divergence of closely related genomes, we compared DNA sequence divergence between sequences from a Brassica rapa ssp. pekinensis EST library isolated from flower buds and genomic sequences from Arabidopsis thaliana. The specific objectives were (i) to determine the distribution of and relationship between Ka and Ks, (ii) to identify genes with the lowest and highest Ka:Ks values, and (iii) to evaluate how codon usage has diverged between two closely related species. We found that the distribution of Ka:Ks was unimodal, and that substitution rates were more variable at nonsynonymous than synonymous sites, and detected no evidence that Ka and Ks were positively correlated. Several genes had Ka:Ks values equal to or near zero, as expected for genes that have evolved under strong selective constraint. In contrast, there were no genes with Ka:Ks > 1 and thus we found no strong evidence that any of the 218 sequences we analyzed have evolved in response to positive selection. We detected a stronger codon bias but a lower frequency of GC at synonymous sites in A. thaliana than B. rapa. Moreover, there has been a shift in the profile of most commonly used synonymous codons since these two species diverged from one another. This shift in codon usage may have been caused by stronger selection acting on codon usage or by a shift in the direction of mutational bias in the B. rapa phylogenetic lineage.
AB - To characterize the coding-sequence divergence of closely related genomes, we compared DNA sequence divergence between sequences from a Brassica rapa ssp. pekinensis EST library isolated from flower buds and genomic sequences from Arabidopsis thaliana. The specific objectives were (i) to determine the distribution of and relationship between Ka and Ks, (ii) to identify genes with the lowest and highest Ka:Ks values, and (iii) to evaluate how codon usage has diverged between two closely related species. We found that the distribution of Ka:Ks was unimodal, and that substitution rates were more variable at nonsynonymous than synonymous sites, and detected no evidence that Ka and Ks were positively correlated. Several genes had Ka:Ks values equal to or near zero, as expected for genes that have evolved under strong selective constraint. In contrast, there were no genes with Ka:Ks > 1 and thus we found no strong evidence that any of the 218 sequences we analyzed have evolved in response to positive selection. We detected a stronger codon bias but a lower frequency of GC at synonymous sites in A. thaliana than B. rapa. Moreover, there has been a shift in the profile of most commonly used synonymous codons since these two species diverged from one another. This shift in codon usage may have been caused by stronger selection acting on codon usage or by a shift in the direction of mutational bias in the B. rapa phylogenetic lineage.
KW - Codon bias
KW - Evolutionary rates
KW - Genome
KW - K:K
KW - Mutation
KW - Nonsynonymous substitution
KW - Synonymous substitution
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U2 - 10.1007/s0023901-0074-1
DO - 10.1007/s0023901-0074-1
M3 - Article
C2 - 12029356
AN - SCOPUS:0036100820
SN - 0022-2844
VL - 54
SP - 746
EP - 753
JO - Journal of Molecular Evolution
JF - Journal of Molecular Evolution
IS - 6
ER -