Comparative Genomics Reveals Insights into Avian Genome Evolution and Adaptation

Overview

Journal Science

Specialty Science

Date 2014 Dec 16

PMID 25504712

Citations 496

Authors

Guojie Zhang

Cai Li

Qiye Li

Bo Li

Denis M Larkin

Chul Lee

Jay F Storz

Agostinho Antunes

Matthew J Greenwold

Robert W Meredith

Anders Odeen

Jie Cui

Qi Zhou

Luohao Xu

Hailin Pan

Zongji Wang

Lijun Jin

Pei Zhang

Haofu Hu

Wei Yang

Jiang Hu

Jin Xiao

Zhikai Yang

Yang Liu

Qiaolin Xie

Hao Yu

Jinmin Lian

Ping Wen

Fang Zhang

Hui Li

Yongli Zeng

Zijun Xiong

Shiping Liu

Long Zhou

Zhiyong Huang

Na An

Jie Wang

Qiumei Zheng

Yingqi Xiong

Guangbiao Wang

Bo Wang

Jingjing Wang

Yu Fan

Rute R da Fonseca

Alonzo Alfaro-Nunez

Mikkel Schubert

Ludovic Orlando

Tobias Mourier

Jason T Howard

Ganeshkumar Ganapathy

Andreas Pfenning

Osceola Whitney

Miriam V Rivas

Erina Hara

Julia Smith

Marta Farre

Jitendra Narayan

Gancho Slavov

Michael N Romanov

Rui Borges

Joao Paulo Machado

Imran Khan

Mark S Springer

John Gatesy

Federico G Hoffmann

Juan C Opazo

Olle Hastad

Roger H Sawyer

Heebal Kim

Kyu-Won Kim

Hyeon Jeong Kim

Seoae Cho

Ning Li

Yinhua Huang

Michael W Bruford

Xiangjiang Zhan

Andrew Dixon

Mads F Bertelsen

Elizabeth Derryberry

Wesley Warren

Richard K Wilson

Shengbin Li

David A Ray

Richard E Green

Stephen J OBrien

Darren Griffin

Warren E Johnson

David Haussler

Oliver A Ryder

Eske Willerslev

Gary R Graves

Per Alstrom

Jon Fjeldsa

David P Mindell

Scott V Edwards

Edward L Braun

Carsten Rahbek

David W Burt

Peter Houde

Yong Zhang

Huanming Yang

Jian Wang

Erich D Jarvis

M Thomas P Gilbert

Jun Wang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Birds are the most species-rich class of tetrapod vertebrates and have wide relevance across many research fields. We explored bird macroevolution using full genomes from 48 avian species representing all major extant clades. The avian genome is principally characterized by its constrained size, which predominantly arose because of lineage-specific erosion of repetitive elements, large segmental deletions, and gene loss. Avian genomes furthermore show a remarkably high degree of evolutionary stasis at the levels of nucleotide sequence, gene synteny, and chromosomal structure. Despite this pattern of conservation, we detected many non-neutral evolutionary changes in protein-coding genes and noncoding regions. These analyses reveal that pan-avian genomic diversity covaries with adaptations to different lifestyles and convergent evolution of traits.

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