ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland 4811, Australia.
Trends Genet. 2010 Apr;26(4):154-8. doi: 10.1016/j.tig.2010.01.003. Epub 2010 Feb 1.
Recent thought on genome evolution has focused on the creation of new genes and changes in regulatory mechanisms while ignoring the role of selective gene loss in shaping genomes. Using data from two cnidarians, the jellyfish Clytia and the coral Acropora, we examined the relative significance of new 'taxonomically restricted' genes and selectively retained ancestral genes in enabling the evolution of novel traits. Consistent with its more complex life-cycle, the proportion of novel genes identified in Clytia was higher than that in the 'polyp only' cnidarians Nematostella and Hydra, but each of these cnidarians has retained a proportion of ancestral genes not present in the other two. The ubiquity and near-stochastic nature of gene loss can explain the discord between patterns of gene distribution and taxonomy.
最近关于基因组进化的思考集中在新基因的产生和调控机制的变化上，而忽略了选择性基因丢失在塑造基因组方面的作用。我们使用来自两种刺胞动物——水母 Clytia 和珊瑚 Acropora 的数据，研究了新的“分类限制”基因和选择性保留的祖先基因在使新特征进化方面的相对重要性。与更复杂的生命周期一致，在 Clytia 中鉴定的新基因比例高于仅在息肉阶段存在的刺胞动物 Nematostella 和 Hydra，但是这些刺胞动物中的每一种都保留了一部分不在其他两种中存在的祖先基因。基因丢失的普遍性和近乎随机的性质可以解释基因分布模式和分类之间的不匹配。
