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Fast co-evolution of sevenless and bride of sevenless in endopterygote insects

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Abstract

Activation of Ras signaling by the receptor tyrosine kinase Sevenless plays important roles during retinal patterning and male germline development in Drosophila. Sevenless is orthologous to the vertebrate receptor tyrosine kinase c-ros. Remarkably, vertebrate ligands of c-Ros as well as non-Drosophila orthologs of the Sevenless ligand Bride of sevenless have remained elusive. Using newly available insect genome sequence information, we investigated the evolutionary conservation of the seven transmembrane domain protein gene bride of sevenless. Single orthologs were identified in the genomes of mosquito, flour beetle, and honeybee due to strong sequence conservation in the seven transmembrane domain. The extracellular region, however, is only detectably conserved within but not outside Diptera. Analysis of domain-specific substitution rates demonstrates correlated fast rates of evolutionary change in the extracellular domains of both bride of sevenless and sevenless. The rapid pace of sequence change explains why Sevenless ligands are difficult to detect by sequence similarity in distantly related phyla. Second, the conservation of bride of sevenless in flour beetle and honeybee raises the possibility of conserved Sevenless signaling controlled patterning processes in endopterygote insects.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Hugh Robertson for valuable discussion and two anonymous reviewers for useful suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Wayne State University, 5047 Gullen Mall, Detroit, MI, 48202, USA

    Riyue Bao & Markus Friedrich

  2. Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Wayne State University School of Medicine, 540 East Canfield Avenue, Detroit, MI, 48201, USA

    Markus Friedrich

Authors
  1. Riyue Bao
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  2. Markus Friedrich
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Markus Friedrich.

Additional information

Communicated by S. Roth

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file 1

Multiple alignment of all boss orthologs in Gblocks and FASTA format (DOC 99 kb)

Supplementary file 2

Multiple alignment of all boss-related 7TM domain sequences in Gblocks and FASTA format (DOC 115 kb)

Supplementary file 3

Pairwise alignment of Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila pseudoobscura boss in Gblocks and FASTA format (DOC 52 kb)

Supplementary file 4

Multiple alignment of boss from Drosophila melanogaster, Drosophila pseudoobscura, Drosophila virilis, and Aedes aegypti in Gblocks and FASTA format (DOC 76 kb)

Supplementary file 5

Pairwise alignment of Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila pseudoobscura sev in Gblocks and FASTA format (DOC 112 kb)

Supplementary file 6

Multiple alignment of sev from Drosophila melanogaster, Drosophila pseudoobscura, Drosophila virilis, and Aedes aegypti in Gblocks and FASTA format (DOC 160 kb)

Supplementary file 7

Pairwise alignment of Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila pseudoobscura Egfr in Gblocks and FASTA format (DOC 79 kb)

Supplementary file 8

Multiple alignment of Egfr from Drosophila melanogaster, Drosophila pseudoobscura, Drosophila virilis, and Aedes aegypti in Gblocks and FASTA format (DOC 119 kb)

Supplementary file 9

Excel spreadsheet with accession numbers of boss, sev, and Egfr gene models from Drosophila melanogaster, Drosophila pseudoobscura, Drosophila virilis, Aedes aegypti, Tribolium castaneum, and Apis mellifera used in this study (XLS 17 kb)

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Bao, R., Friedrich, M. Fast co-evolution of sevenless and bride of sevenless in endopterygote insects. Dev Genes Evol 218, 215–220 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-007-0201-0

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