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Adaptive Diversification of Vomeronasal Receptor 1 Genes in Rodents

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Abstract

The vomeronasal receptor 1 (V1R) are believed to be pheromone receptors in rodents. Here we used computational methods to identify 95 and 62 new putative V1R genes from the draft rat and mouse genome sequence, respectively. The rat V1R repertoire consists of 11 subfamilies, 10 of which are shared with the mouse, while rat appears to lack the H and I subfamilies found in mouse and possesses one unique subfamily (M). The estimations of the relative divergence times suggest that many subfamilies originated after the split of rodents and primates. The analysis also reveals that these clusters underwent an expansion very close to the split of mouse and rat. In addition, maximum likelihood analysis showed that the nonsynonymous and synonymous rate ratio for most of these clusters was much higher than one, suggesting the role of positive selection in the diversification of these duplicated V1R genes. Because V1R are thought to mediate the process of signal transduction in response to pheromone detection, we speculate that the V1R genes have evolved under positive Darwinian selection to maintain the ability to discriminate between large and complex pheromonal mixtures.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Katherine A. Dunn and two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments. This work was supported by grants from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSCX2-1-05), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30430110 and 30021004), and the Program for Key International S & T Cooperation Project of P.R. China (2001CB711103) to Y.P.Z, a startup fund from Dalhousie Unievrsity to J.P.B., and a grant from the Genome Atlantic Centre of Genome Canada to J.P.B.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Domestic Animals and Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650223, China

    Peng Shi, Hui Yang & Ya-ping Zhang

  2. Laboratory for Conservation and Utilization of Bio-resources, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China

    Peng Shi

  3. The Graduate School, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100039, China

    Peng Shi & Hui Yang

  4. Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Joseph P. Bielawski

  5. Department of Mathematics & Statistics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Joseph P. Bielawski

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  1. Peng Shi
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  2. Joseph P. Bielawski
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Correspondence to Ya-ping Zhang.

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Reviewing Editor: Dr. Rasmus Nielsen

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Shi, P., Bielawski, J.P., Yang, H. et al. Adaptive Diversification of Vomeronasal Receptor 1 Genes in Rodents. J Mol Evol 60, 566–576 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-004-0172-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-004-0172-y

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