Department of Crop Sciences and Entomology, Institute for Genomic Biology, and Neuroscience Program, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 May 3;108(18):7472-7. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1103457108. Epub 2011 Apr 11.
Eusociality has arisen independently at least 11 times in insects. Despite this convergence, there are striking differences among eusocial lifestyles, ranging from species living in small colonies with overt conflict over reproduction to species in which colonies contain hundreds of thousands of highly specialized sterile workers produced by one or a few queens. Although the evolution of eusociality has been intensively studied, the genetic changes involved in the evolution of eusociality are relatively unknown. We examined patterns of molecular evolution across three independent origins of eusociality by sequencing transcriptomes of nine socially diverse bee species and combining these data with genome sequence from the honey bee Apis mellifera to generate orthologous sequence alignments for 3,647 genes. We found a shared set of 212 genes with a molecular signature of accelerated evolution across all eusocial lineages studied, as well as unique sets of 173 and 218 genes with a signature of accelerated evolution specific to either highly or primitively eusocial lineages, respectively. These results demonstrate that convergent evolution can involve a mosaic pattern of molecular changes in both shared and lineage-specific sets of genes. Genes involved in signal transduction, gland development, and carbohydrate metabolism are among the most prominent rapidly evolving genes in eusocial lineages. These findings provide a starting point for linking specific genetic changes to the evolution of eusociality.
社会性起源在昆虫中至少独立出现了 11 次。尽管存在这种趋同现象，但社会性生活方式之间存在显著差异，从具有明显繁殖冲突的小群体物种到包含数十万高度专门化的不育工蜂的物种，这些工蜂由一个或几个蜂王产生。尽管社会性起源的进化已经得到了深入研究，但涉及社会性起源进化的遗传变化相对未知。我们通过对 9 种具有不同社会结构的蜜蜂物种的转录组进行测序，并将这些数据与来自蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）的基因组序列相结合，生成了 3647 个基因的直系同源序列比对，从而检查了三个独立社会性起源的分子进化模式。我们在所有研究的社会性进化谱系中发现了一组共享的 212 个具有加速进化分子特征的基因，以及分别具有高度或原始社会性进化谱系特异性加速进化特征的 173 个和 218 个独特基因集。这些结果表明，趋同进化可以涉及共享和谱系特异性基因集中的分子变化的镶嵌模式。参与信号转导、腺体发育和碳水化合物代谢的基因是社会性进化谱系中进化最快的基因之一。这些发现为将特定的遗传变化与社会性起源的进化联系起来提供了一个起点。
