Comparative RNAi screens in C. elegans and C. briggsae reveal the impact of developmental system drift on gene function

Although two related species may have extremely similar phenotypes, the genetic networks underpinning this conserved biology may have diverged substantially since they last shared a common ancestor. This is termed Developmental System Drift (DSD) and reflects the plasticity of genetic networks. One...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLoS genetics 2014-02, Vol.10 (2), p.e1004077-e1004077
Main Authors: Verster, Adrian J, Ramani, Arun K, McKay, Sheldon J, Fraser, Andrew G
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Biology
Caenorhabditis elegans
Caenorhabditis elegans - genetics
Caenorhabditis elegans - growth & development
Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins - biosynthesis
Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins - genetics
Evolution
Evolution, Molecular
Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental
Gene Regulatory Networks
Genes
Genetic aspects
Genomics
Nematodes
Neuroplasticity
Phenotype
RNA Interference
Sequence Homology, Amino Acid
Species Specificity
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Summary:Although two related species may have extremely similar phenotypes, the genetic networks underpinning this conserved biology may have diverged substantially since they last shared a common ancestor. This is termed Developmental System Drift (DSD) and reflects the plasticity of genetic networks. One consequence of DSD is that some orthologous genes will have evolved different in vivo functions in two such phenotypically similar, related species and will therefore have different loss of function phenotypes. Here we report an RNAi screen in C. elegans and C. briggsae to identify such cases. We screened 1333 genes in both species and identified 91 orthologues that have different RNAi phenotypes. Intriguingly, we find that recently evolved genes of unknown function have the fastest evolving in vivo functions and, in several cases, we identify the molecular events driving these changes. We thus find that DSD has a major impact on the evolution of gene function and we anticipate that the C. briggsae RNAi library reported here will drive future studies on comparative functional genomics screens in these nematodes.
ISSN:1553-7404
1553-7390
1553-7404
DOI:10.1371/journal.pgen.1004077