Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Insect Mol Biol. 2013 Feb;22(1):72-87. doi: 10.1111/imb.12004. Epub 2012 Dec 5.
Eukaryotic horizontal gene transfer (HGT) events are increasingly being discovered yet few reports have summarized multiple occurrences in a wide range of species. We systematically investigated HGT events in the order Lepidoptera by employing a series of filters. Bombyx mori, Danaus plexippus and Heliconius melpomene had 13, 12 and 12 HGTs, respectively, from bacteria and fungi. These HGTs contributed a total of 64 predicted genes: 22 to B. mori, 22 to D. plexippus and 20 to H. melpomene. Several new genes were generated by post-transfer duplications. Post-transfer duplication of a suite of functional HGTs has rarely been reported in higher organisms. The distributional patterns of paralogues for certain genes differed in the three species, indicating potential independent duplication or loss events. All of these HGTs had homologues expressed in some other lepidopterans, indicating ancient transfer events. Most HGTs were involved in the metabolism of sugar and amino acids. These HGTs appeared to have experienced amelioration, purifying selection and accelerated evolution to adapt to the background genome of the recipient. The discovery of ancient, massive HGTs and duplications in lepidopterans and their adaptive evolution provides further insights into the evolutionary significance of the events from donors to multicellular host recipients.
真核生物水平基因转移（HGT）事件越来越多地被发现，但很少有报道对多种生物中发生的此类事件进行总结。我们通过一系列筛选，系统地研究了鳞翅目昆虫的 HGT 事件。家蚕、大蓝闪蝶和红珠凤蝶分别从细菌和真菌中获得了 13、12 和 12 个 HGT，这些 HGT 共贡献了 64 个预测基因：22 个给家蚕，22 个给大蓝闪蝶，20 个给红珠凤蝶。几个新基因是通过转移后的复制产生的。在高等生物中，很少有报道表明转移后的功能 HGT 发生了复制。某些基因的同源基因在这三个物种中的分布模式不同，表明可能发生了独立的复制或丢失事件。所有这些 HGT 都有在其他鳞翅目昆虫中表达的同源物，表明这是古老的转移事件。大多数 HGT 都参与糖和氨基酸的代谢。这些 HGT 似乎经历了改善、纯化选择和加速进化，以适应受体的背景基因组。在鳞翅目昆虫中发现的古老、大量的 HGT 和复制及其适应性进化，进一步深入了解了从供体到多细胞宿主受体的这些事件的进化意义。
