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PMID: 16484289 Published · ppublish English Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Proceedings of the SMBE Tri-National Young Investigators' Workshop 2005. Lineage-specific expansions and contractions of the bitter taste receptor gene repertoire in vertebrates.

Molecular biology and evolution ·Vol. 23 ·No. 5 ·2006-05-00 ·Pages 964-72

Go Y, SMBE Tri-National Young Investigators

Abstract

The sense of bitter taste plays a critical role in how organisms avoid generally bitter toxic and harmful substances. Previous studies revealed that there were 25 intact bitter taste receptor (T2R) genes in humans and 34 in mice. However, because the recent chicken genome project reported only three T2R genes, it appears that extensive gene expansions occurred in the lineage leading to mammals or extensive gene contractions occurred in the lineage leading to birds. Here, I examined the T2R gene repertoire in placental mammals (dogs, Canis familiaris; and cows, Bos taurus), marsupials (opossums, Monodelphis domestica), amphibians (frogs, Xenopus tropicalis), and fishes (zebrafishes, Danio rerio; and pufferfishes, Takifugu rubripes) to investigate the birth-and-death process of T2R genes throughout vertebrate evolution. I show that (1) the first extensive gene expansions occurred before the divergence of mammals from reptiles/birds but after the divergence of amniotes (reptiles/birds/mammals) from amphibians, (2) subsequent gene expansions continuously took place in the ancestral mammalian lineage and the lineage leading to amphibians, as evidenced by the presence of 15, 18, 26, and 49 intact T2R genes in the dog, cow, opossum, and frog genome, respectively, and (3) contractions of the gene repertoire happened in the lineage leading to chickens. Thus, continuous gene expansions have shaped the T2R repertoire in mammals, but the contractions subsequent to the first round of expansions have made the chicken T2R repertoire narrow. These dramatic changes in the repertoire size might reflect the daily intake of foods from an external environment as a driving force of evolution.

MeSH Terms

Animals Biological Evolution Cell Lineage Chickens Evolution, Molecular Genetics Genome Genomics/methods Humans Mammals Models, Genetic Molecular Sequence Data Phylogeny Species Specificity Taste Taste Buds Vertebrates/genetics

Authors & Affiliations

2 authors, click to expand affiliations / ORCID

Go Yasuhiro

Department of Biosystems Science, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (Sokendai), Hayama, Kanagawa, Japan. [email protected]

SMBE Tri-National Young Investigators

Article Info

Journal

Molecular biology and evolution

Abbr.

Mol Biol Evol

ISSN

0737-4038

DOI

10.1093/molbev/msj106

[email protected]

Published

2006-05-00

Epub

2006-00-16

Pages

964-72

Language

English

Region

United States

NLM ID

8501455

Subset

Databases

GENBANK

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External Links

PubMed source DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msj106 View journal details

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Proceedings of the SMBE Tri-National Young Investigators' Workshop 2005. Lineage-specific expansions and contractions of the bitter taste receptor gene repertoire in vertebrates.

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