Biological and Environmental Sciences & Engineering Division (BESE), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Red Sea Research Center (RSRC), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia.
Marine Biology Department, Centre Scientifique de Monaco, Monaco, Monaco.
Mol Biol Evol. 2021 Aug 23;38(9):3543-3555. doi: 10.1093/molbev/msab103.
Corals build the structural foundation of coral reefs, one of the most diverse and productive ecosystems on our planet. Although the process of coral calcification that allows corals to build these immense structures has been extensively investigated, we still know little about the evolutionary processes that allowed the soft-bodied ancestor of corals to become the ecosystem builders they are today. Using a combination of phylogenomics, proteomics, and immunohistochemistry, we show that scleractinian corals likely acquired the ability to calcify sometime between ∼308 and ∼265 Ma through a combination of lineage-specific gene duplications and the co-option of existing genes to the calcification process. Our results suggest that coral calcification did not require extensive evolutionary changes, but rather few coral-specific gene duplications and a series of small, gradual optimizations of ancestral proteins and their co-option to the calcification process.
珊瑚构建了珊瑚礁的结构基础，珊瑚礁是地球上最多样化和生产力最高的生态系统之一。尽管珊瑚钙化的过程，使珊瑚能够建造这些巨大的结构，已经被广泛研究，但我们仍然对允许珊瑚柔软的祖先成为它们今天的生态系统建造者的进化过程知之甚少。通过系统发生基因组学、蛋白质组学和免疫组织化学的结合，我们表明，石珊瑚可能在 3.08 亿至 2.65 亿年前通过谱系特异性基因复制的组合以及将现有基因合并到钙化过程中来获得钙化的能力。我们的研究结果表明，珊瑚钙化并不需要广泛的进化改变，而只需要少数珊瑚特异性基因复制和一系列对祖先蛋白的小的、渐进的优化，并将其合并到钙化过程中。
