Comparative RNAi Screens in C. elegans and C. briggsae Reveal the Impact of Developmental System Drift on Gene Function

Verster, A. J., Ramani, A. K., McKay, S. J., Fraser, A. G. (February 2014) Comparative RNAi Screens in C. elegans and C. briggsae Reveal the Impact of Developmental System Drift on Gene Function. Plos Genetics, 10 (2). e1004077. ISSN 1553-7390

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URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24516395

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1004077

Abstract

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.

Item Type:	Paper
Subjects:	organism description > animal > C elegans bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > DNA, RNA structure, function, modification Investigative techniques and equipment Investigative techniques and equipment > RNAI bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > DNA, RNA structure, function, modification > RNAi bioinformatics > genomics and proteomics > genetics & nucleic acid processing > DNA, RNA structure, function, modification > genes, structure and function
CSHL Authors:	McKay, Sheldon J.
Communities:	Dolan DNA Learning Center
Depositing User:	Matt Covey
Date:	February 2014
Date Deposited:	03 Mar 2014 21:05
Last Modified:	03 Mar 2014 21:05
PMCID:	PMC3916228
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/29546

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