Relaxation of yeast mitochondrial functions after whole-genome duplication
- Huifeng Jiang1,2,3,
- Wenjun Guan1,4,
- David Pinney5,
- Wen Wang2,6, and
- Zhenglong Gu1,6
- 1 Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA;
- 2 CAS-Max Planck Junior Research Group, State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Kunming, Yunnan 650223, People’s Republic of China;
- 3 Graduate School of Chinese Academy Sciences, Beijing 100039, People’s Republic of China;
- 4 Zhejiang University, College of Life Sciences, Hangzhou 310058, People’s Republic of China;
- 5 Department of Mathematics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA
Abstract
Mitochondria are essential for cellular energy production in most eukaryotic organisms. However, when glucose is abundant, yeast species that underwent whole-genome duplication (WGD) mostly conduct fermentation even under aerobic conditions, and most can survive without a functional mitochondrial genome. In this study, we show that the rate of evolution for the nuclear-encoded mitochondrial genes was greater in post-WGD species than pre-WGD species. Furthermore, codon usage bias was relaxed for these genes in post-WGD yeast species. The codon usage pattern and the distribution of a particular transcription regulatory element suggest that the change to an efficient aerobic fermentation lifestyle in this lineage might have emerged after WGD between the divergence of Kluyveromyces polysporus and Saccharomyces castellii from their common ancestor. This new energy production strategy could have led to the relaxation of mitochondrial function in the relevant yeast species.
Footnotes
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↵6 Corresponding authors.
↵6 E-mail zg27{at}cornell.edu; fax (607) 255-1033.
↵6 E-mail wwang{at}mail.kiz.ac.cn; fax 86-871-5193137.
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[Supplemental material is available online at www.genome.org.]
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Article published online before print. Article and publication date are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.074674.107.
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- Received November 21, 2007.
- Accepted May 14, 2008.
