Trail Frances, Wang Zheng, Stefanko Kayla, Cubba Caitlyn, Townsend Jeffrey P
Department of Plant Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States of America.
Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States of America.
PLoS Genet. 2017 Jul 13;13(7):e1006867. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1006867. eCollection 2017 Jul.
Changes in gene expression have been hypothesized to play an important role in the evolution of divergent morphologies. To test this hypothesis in a model system, we examined differences in fruiting body morphology of five filamentous fungi in the Sordariomycetes, culturing them in a common garden environment and profiling genome-wide gene expression at five developmental stages. We reconstructed ancestral gene expression phenotypes, identifying genes with the largest evolved increases in gene expression across development. Conducting knockouts and performing phenotypic analysis in two divergent species typically demonstrated altered fruiting body development in the species that had evolved increased expression. Our evolutionary approach to finding relevant genes proved far more efficient than other gene deletion studies targeting whole genomes or gene families. Combining gene expression measurements with knockout phenotypes facilitated the refinement of Bayesian networks of the genes underlying fruiting body development, regulation of which is one of the least understood processes of multicellular development.
基因表达的变化被认为在不同形态的进化中起着重要作用。为了在一个模型系统中验证这一假设，我们研究了粪壳菌纲中五种丝状真菌子实体形态的差异，将它们培养在一个共同的环境中，并在五个发育阶段对全基因组基因表达进行分析。我们重建了祖先基因表达表型，识别出在整个发育过程中基因表达进化增加最大的基因。在两个不同的物种中进行基因敲除和表型分析，通常表明在进化过程中基因表达增加的物种中，子实体发育发生了改变。我们寻找相关基因的进化方法被证明比其他针对全基因组或基因家族的基因缺失研究效率高得多。将基因表达测量与敲除表型相结合，有助于完善子实体发育相关基因的贝叶斯网络，而子实体发育的调控是多细胞发育中最不为人所理解的过程之一。
