Environomics Future Science Platform, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Crawley, WA, Australia.
CSIRO Information Management & Technology (IM&T) Scientific Computing, Eveleigh, NSW, Australia.
Commun Biol. 2024 Oct 30;7(1):1414. doi: 10.1038/s42003-024-07046-z.
Animal age at maturity can be used as a universal and simple predictor of species extinction risk. At present, methods to estimate age at maturity are typically species-specific, limiting comparisons among species, or are infeasible due to practical constraints. To overcome this, here we develop a universal predictor of species-level age at maturity for vertebrates. We show that modelling the frequency of 'CG' sequences (CpG sites) in gene promoter regions yields rapid predictions of vertebrate age at maturity. Our models predict age at maturity with remarkable accuracy and generalisability, with median error rates of 30% (less than 1 year) and are robust to genome assemblies of varying quality. We generate predictions for 1912 vertebrate species for which age at maturity estimates were previously absent from public databases. The predictions can be used to help to inform management decisions for the many species for which more detailed population information is currently unavailable.
动物成熟年龄可作为物种灭绝风险的通用且简单的预测因子。目前，估计成熟年龄的方法通常是针对特定物种的，限制了物种之间的比较，或者由于实际限制而不可行。为了克服这一问题，我们在此为脊椎动物开发了一种通用的成熟年龄预测因子。我们表明，对基因启动子区域中“CG”序列（CpG 位点）的频率进行建模，可以快速预测脊椎动物的成熟年龄。我们的模型以惊人的准确性和通用性来预测成熟年龄，中位数误差率为 30%（不到 1 年），并且对不同质量的基因组组装具有鲁棒性。我们为 1912 种脊椎动物生成了预测值，这些动物的成熟年龄估计值之前在公共数据库中不存在。这些预测值可用于帮助为许多目前缺乏更详细种群信息的物种做出管理决策。
