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Genome Biology and Evolution Advance Access originally published online on August 4, 2009
Genome Biology and Evolution (2009) Vol. 2009:288; doi:10.1093/gbe/evp028 published on August 21, 2009
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© 2009 The Authors
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Nucleotide Substitution Bias within the Genus Drosophila Affects the Pattern of Proteome Evolution

Mihai Albu*,1, Xiang Jia Min{dagger},1, G. Brian Golding{ddagger} and Donal Hickey*

* Department of Biology, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
{dagger} Department of Biological Sciences, Youngstown State University
{ddagger} Department of Biology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

E-mail: donal.hickey{at}concordia.ca.


  Abstract

The availability of complete genome sequences for 12 Drosophila species provides an unprecedented resource for large-scale studies of genome evolution. In this study, we looked for correlated shifts in the patterns of genome and proteome evolution within the genus Drosophila. Specifically, we asked if the nucleotide composition of the Drosophila willistoni genome—which is significantly less GC rich than the other 11 sequenced Drosophila genomes—is reflected in an altered pattern of amino acid substitutions in the encoded proteins. Our results show that this is indeed the case: There are large and highly significant asymmetries in the patterns of amino acid substitution between D. willistoni and Drosophila melanogaster, and they are in the direction predicted by the nucleotide biases. The implication of this result, combined with previous studies on long-term proteome evolution, is that substitutional biases at the DNA level can be a major factor in determining both the long-term and the short-term directions of proteome evolution.

Keywords: nucleotide content, amino acid composition, GC content

Accepted July 30, 2009

1 These authors contributed equally to this work.

William Martin, Associate Editor


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