Revised annotations, sex-biased expression, and lineage-specific genes in the Drosophila melanogaster group.

Publication Year
2014

Type

Journal Article
Abstract

Here, we provide revised gene models for D. ananassae, D. yakuba, and D. simulans, which include untranslated regions and empirically verified intron-exon boundaries, as well as ortholog groups identified using a fuzzy reciprocal-best-hit blast comparison. Using these revised annotations, we perform differential expression testing using the cufflinks suite to provide a broad overview of differential expression between reproductive tissues and the carcass. We identify thousands of genes that are differentially expressed across tissues in D. yakuba and D. simulans, with roughly 60% agreement in expression patterns of orthologs in D. yakuba and D. simulans. We identify several cases of putative polycistronic transcripts, pointing to a combination of transcriptional read-through in the genome as well as putative gene fusion and fission events across taxa. We furthermore identify hundreds of lineage specific genes in each species with no blast hits among transcripts of any other Drosophila species, which are candidates for neofunctionalized proteins and a potential source of genetic novelty.

Journal
G3 (Bethesda)
Volume
4
Issue
12
Pages
2345-51
Date Published
2014 Oct 01
ISSN Number
2160-1836
Alternate Journal
G3 (Bethesda)
PMCID
PMC4267930
PMID
25273863