Biology Faculty Articles

Comparative Genomics Reveals Insights into Avian Genome Evolution and Adaptation

ORCID

0000-0001-7353-8301

ResearcherID

N-1726-2015

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Science

ISSN

0036-8075

Publication Date

12-12-2014

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.

Volume

346

Issue

6215

First Page

1311

Last Page

1320

Comments

©2014 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Additional Comments

Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship grant #: 300837; Danish National Research Foundation grant #: DNRF94; Lundbeck Foundation grant #: R52-A5062; Danish Council for Independent Research Grant #: 10-081390; Howard Hughes Medical Institute and NIH Directors Pioneer award #: DP10D000448

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