Genetic Novelty: How new genes are born
Analysis of yeast, fly and human genomes suggests that sequence divergence is not the main source of orphan genes.
- Department of Genetics, Developmental and Cell Biology, Iowa State University, United States
For half a century, most scientists believed that new protein-coding genes arise as a result of mutations in existing protein-coding genes. It was considered impossible for anything as complex as a functional new protein to arise from scratch. However, every species has certain genes, known as 'orphan genes', which code for proteins that are not homologous to proteins found in any other species. What do these orphan genes do, and how are they formed?
To date the roles of hundreds of orphan genes have been characterized. Although this is just a tiny fraction of the total, it is known that most of them code for proteins that bind to conserved proteins such as transcription factors or receptors. Some of these proteins are toxins, some are involved in reproduction, some integrate into existing metabolic and regulatory networks, and some confer resistance to stress (Carvunis et al., 2012; Li et al., 2009; Xiao et al., 2009; Arendsee et al., 2014; Belcaid et al., 2019). However, none of them are enzymes (Arendsee et al., 2014). Orphan genes arise quickly, so they may provide a disruptive mechanism that allows a given species to survive changes to its environment. Thus, the study of how orphan genes arise (and fall) is central to understanding the forces that drive evolution (Figure 1).
Figure 1
Life cycle of orphan genes.
Every species has orphan genes that have no homologs in other species. This schematic shows the genome of the fruit fly (bottom) and the genome of an ancestor of the fruit fly (top). Each panel also shows (from left to right): genes that are highly conserved and can be traced back to prokaryotic organisms (yellow background); genes that are found in just a few related species (taxonomically restricted genes), orphan genes and potential orphan genes that are not currently expressed and are thus free from selection pressure (proto-orphan genes); and regions of the genome that do not code for proteins (blue background) (Van Oss and Carvunis, 2019; Palmieri et al., 2014). An orphan gene can form through the rapid divergence of the coding sequence (CDS) of an existing gene (1), or arise de novo from regions of the genome that do not code for proteins (including the non-coding parts of genes that evolve to code for proteins; 2). Some orphan genes will be important for survival, and will thus be selected for and gradually optimized (3). This means that the genes in a single organism will have a gradient of ages (Tautz and Domazet-Lošo, 2011). Many proto-orphan genes will undergo pseudogenation (that is, they will not be retained; 4). Coding sequences (shown as thick colored bars) with detectable homology are shown in similar colors. Vakirlis et al. estimate that a minority of orphan genes have arisen by divergence of the coding sequence of existing genes.
One possible mechanism is the 'de novo' appearance of a gene from an intergenic region or a completely new reading frame within an existing gene (Tautz and Domazet-Lošo, 2011). An alternative mechanism is that the coding sequence of the orphan gene arises by rapid divergence from the coding sequence of a preexisting gene: this would mean that an entire set of regulatory and structural elements would be available to the gene as it evolves. Now, in eLife, Nikolaos Vakirlis and Aoife McLysaght (both from Trinity College Dublin) and Anne-Ruxandra Carvunis (University of Pittsburgh) report how they have studied yeast, fly and human genes to compare the contributions of these two mechanisms to the emergence of orphan genes (Vakirlis et al., 2020).
Previous studies have used simulations to estimate the number of orphan genes that appear by divergence; until now, no one had relied on actual genomics data to study this phenomenon. Vakirlis et al. use a new approach to analyze orphan genes that have originated through divergence. They examine regions of the genome that correspond to each other (so-called syntenic regions) in related species to determine whether a gene exists in both regions and, if so, whether the proteins are non-homologous. If the genes have no homology, they may have originated by rapid divergence from the coding sequence of a preexisting gene.
Using this method, Vakirlis et al. infer that at most 45% of S. cerevisiae (yeast) orphan genes, 25% of D. melanogaster (fruit fly) orphan genes, and 18% of human orphan genes arose by rapid divergence, but this is an upper estimate. For example, it is possible that a new coding sequence might have arisen de novo within an existing gene, rather than the existing coding sequence having been modified beyond recognition.
But how can a protein sequence continue to be selected for as it rapidly diverges? Vakirlis et al. suggest that divergence might occur by a process of partial pseudogenation: the existing gene becomes non-functional, and then, with no selection pressure to retain the old protein, it diverges to form an orphan gene.
Many orphan genes may not have been identified yet, because they do not have homologs in other species, and have few recognizable sequence features. This means that up to 80% of orphan genes can be missed when a new genome is annotated (Seetharam et al., 2019). The approach detailed by Vakirlis, Carvunis and McLysaght evaluates specifically those annotated orphan genes for which a similar gene exists in a related species (which is ~50% of them; Arendsee et al., 2019). As high-quality genomes from more species become available, and as more orphan genes are annotated, the approach will provide yet deeper insights into the origin of these genes.
One of the many open questions in this field deals with genes of ‘mixed age’. Some such genes have incorporated ‘chunks’ of orphans into their coding sequences. A gene that has done this is (somewhat arbitrarily) considered to be the age of its most ancient segment, but we know little about the mechanism of this process or its significance. Another question involves the unique strategies and rates of evolution of each gene (Revell et al., 2018). How might the abundance and mechanisms of orphan gene origin vary among species? And how do different environments affect the emergence of orphan genes?
References
-
Coming of age: orphan genes in plantsTrends in Plant Science 19:698–708.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2014.07.003
-
Phylostratr: a framework for phylostratigraphyBioinformatics 35:3617–3627.https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btz171
-
Comparing evolutionary rates between trees, clades and traitsMethods in Ecology and Evolution 9:994–1005.https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12977
-
The evolutionary origin of orphan genesNature Reviews Genetics 12:692–702.https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg3053
Article and author information
Author details
Eve Syrkin Wurtele
Publication history
Copyright
© 2020, Singh and Syrkin Wurtele
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 4,298
- views
-
- 385
- downloads
-
- 29
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Genetic Novelty: How new genes are born
eLife 9:e55136.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.55136
Further reading
-
- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
- Computational and Systems Biology
The spike protein is essential to the SARS-CoV-2 virus life cycle, facilitating virus entry and mediating viral-host membrane fusion. The spike contains a fatty acid (FA) binding site between every two neighbouring receptor-binding domains. This site is coupled to key regions in the protein, but the impact of glycans on these allosteric effects has not been investigated. Using dynamical nonequilibrium molecular dynamics (D-NEMD) simulations, we explore the allosteric effects of the FA site in the fully glycosylated spike of the SARS-CoV-2 ancestral variant. Our results identify the allosteric networks connecting the FA site to functionally important regions in the protein, including the receptor-binding motif, an antigenic supersite in the N-terminal domain, the fusion peptide region, and another allosteric site known to bind heme and biliverdin. The networks identified here highlight the complexity of the allosteric modulation in this protein and reveal a striking and unexpected link between different allosteric sites. Comparison of the FA site connections from D-NEMD in the glycosylated and non-glycosylated spike revealed that glycans do not qualitatively change the internal allosteric pathways but can facilitate the transmission of the structural changes within and between subunits.
-
- Computational and Systems Biology
In eukaryotes, protein kinase signaling is regulated by a diverse array of post-translational modifications, including phosphorylation of Ser/Thr residues and oxidation of cysteine (Cys) residues. While regulation by activation segment phosphorylation of Ser/Thr residues is well understood, relatively little is known about how oxidation of cysteine residues modulate catalysis. In this study, we investigate redox regulation of the AMPK-related brain-selective kinases (BRSK) 1 and 2, and detail how broad catalytic activity is directly regulated through reversible oxidation and reduction of evolutionarily conserved Cys residues within the catalytic domain. We show that redox-dependent control of BRSKs is a dynamic and multilayered process involving oxidative modifications of several Cys residues, including the formation of intramolecular disulfide bonds involving a pair of Cys residues near the catalytic HRD motif and a highly conserved T-loop Cys with a BRSK-specific Cys within an unusual CPE motif at the end of the activation segment. Consistently, mutation of the CPE-Cys increases catalytic activity in vitro and drives phosphorylation of the BRSK substrate Tau in cells. Molecular modeling and molecular dynamics simulations indicate that oxidation of the CPE-Cys destabilizes a conserved salt bridge network critical for allosteric activation. The occurrence of spatially proximal Cys amino acids in diverse Ser/Thr protein kinase families suggests that disulfide-mediated control of catalytic activity may be a prevalent mechanism for regulation within the broader AMPK family.
