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Back to the sea twice: identifying candidate plant genes for molecular evolution to marine life
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Back to the sea twice: identifying candidate plant genes for molecular evolution to marine life
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Journal Article
Back to the sea twice: identifying candidate plant genes for molecular evolution to marine life
2011
Overview
Background
Seagrasses are a polyphyletic group of monocotyledonous angiosperms that have adapted to a completely submerged lifestyle in marine waters. Here, we exploit two collections of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) of two wide-spread and ecologically important seagrass species, the Mediterranean seagrass
Posidonia oceanica
(L.) Delile and the eelgrass
Zostera marina
L., which have independently evolved from aquatic ancestors. This replicated, yet independent evolutionary history facilitates the identification of traits that may have evolved in parallel and are possible instrumental candidates for adaptation to a marine habitat.
Results
In our study, we provide the first quantitative perspective on molecular adaptations in two seagrass species. By constructing orthologous gene clusters shared between two seagrasses (
Z. marina
and
P. oceanica
) and eight distantly related terrestrial angiosperm species, 51 genes could be identified with detection of positive selection along the seagrass branches of the phylogenetic tree. Characterization of these positively selected genes using KEGG pathways and the Gene Ontology uncovered that these genes are mostly involved in translation, metabolism, and photosynthesis.
Conclusions
These results provide first insights into which seagrass genes have diverged from their terrestrial counterparts via an initial aquatic stage characteristic of the order and to the derived fully-marine stage characteristic of seagrasses. We discuss how adaptive changes in these processes may have contributed to the evolution towards an aquatic and marine existence.
Publisher
BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,BMC
