Taxa de variação evolucionária em macacos do Velho Mundo

Evolutionary rate variation in Old World monkeys

Navin Elango†, Jeeyoung Lee†, Zuogang Peng, Yong-Hwee E Loh and Soojin V Yi*

- Author Affiliations

School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology 310 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA

Author for correspondence (soojin.yi@biology.gatech.edu)

Abstract

We analysed over 8 million base pairs of bacterial artificial chromosome-based sequence alignments of four Old World monkeys and the human genome. Our findings are as follows. (i) Genomic divergences among several Old World monkeys mirror those between well-studied hominoids. (ii) The X-chromosome evolves slower than autosomes, in accord with ‘male-driven evolution’. However, the degree of male mutation bias is lower in Old World monkeys than in hominoids. (iii) Evolutionary rates vary significantly between lineages. The baboon branch shows a particularly slow molecular evolution. Thus, lineage-specific evolutionary rate variation is a common theme of primate genome evolution. (iv) In contrast to the overall pattern, mutations originating from DNA methylation exhibit little variation between lineages. Our study illustrates the potential of primates as a model system to investigate genome evolution, in particular to elucidate molecular mechanisms of substitution rate variation.

Keywords:
Old World monkeys substitution rates male mutation bias comparative genomics

Footnotes

↵† These authors contributed equally to the study.

One contribution to a Special Feature on ‘Whole organism perspectives on understanding molecular evolution’.

Received November 29, 2008.

Accepted January 27, 2009.

© 2009 The Royal Society
+++++

FREE PDF GRÁTIS