Widespread retention of ohnologs in key developmental gene families following whole genome duplication in arachnopulmonates

• DOI: 10.1101/2020.07.10.177725
• Publication Date: 2020-07-11T04:42:35Z
• Authors: Amber Harper; Luis Baudouin Gon...; Anna Schönauer; Ralf Janssen; Michael Seiter; Michaela Holzem; Saad Arif; Alistair P. McGregor; Lauren Sumner-Rooney
• Keywords: Human evolutionary genetics; Comparative Genomics

ABSTRACT Whole genome duplications have occurred multiple times during animal evolution, including in lineages leading to vertebrates, teleosts, horseshoe crabs and arachnopulmonates. These dramatic events initially produce a wealth of new genetic material, generally followed by extensive gene loss. It appears, however, that developmental genes such as homeobox genes, signalling pathway components microRNAs are frequently retained duplicates (so called ohnologs) following whole-genome duplication. not only provide the best evidence for duplication, but an opportunity study its evolutionary consequences. Although these well studied context vertebrate similar comparisons across extant arachnopulmonate orders patchy. We sequenced embryonic transcriptomes from two spider species amblypygid surveyed three important families, Hox, Wnt frizzled, twelve existing transcriptomic genomic resources chelicerates. report retention putative ohnologs, amblypygids, further supporting ancestral also find consistent trajectories Hox repertoires five orders, with inter-order variation specific paralogs. identify between major clades spiders better able reconstruct chronology losses spiders, scorpions. insights shed light on evolution toolkit arachnopulmonates, highlight importance comparative approach within lineages, substantial data future study.