Gene-rich UV sex chromosomes harbor conserved regulators of sexual development
Moss sex chromosomes retain thousands of broadly expressed genes despite millions of years of suppressed recombination.
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
Engineering topics
Burleigh, J. Gordon
Publications and source records attributed to Burleigh, J. Gordon.
The uncharacterized gene EVE contributes to vessel element dimensions in Populus
The radiation of angiosperms led to the emergence of the vast majority of today’s plant species and all our major food crops. Their extraordinary diversification occurred in conjunction with the evolution of a more efficient vascular system for the transport of water, composed of vessel elements. The physical dimensions of these water-conducting specialized cells have played a critical role in angiosperm evolution; they determine resistance to water flow, influence photosynthesis rate, and contribute to plant stature. However, the genetic factors that determine their dimensions are unclear. Here we show that a previously uncharacterized gene, ENLARGED VESSEL ELEMENT ( EVE ) , contributes to the dimensions of vessel elements in Populus , impacting hydraulic conductivity. Our data suggest that EVE is localized in the plasma membrane and is involved in potassium uptake of differentiating xylem cells during vessel development. In plants, EVE first emerged in streptophyte algae, but expanded dramatically among vessel-containing angiosperms. The phylogeny, structure and composition of EVE indicates that it may have been involved in an ancient horizontal gene-transfer event.
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
Finding Our Way through Phenotypes
Despite a large and multifaceted effort to understand the vast landscape of phenotypic data, their current form inhibits productive data analysis. The lack of a community-wide, consensusbased, human- and machine-interpretable language for describing phenotypes and their genomic and environmental contexts is perhaps the most pressing scientific bottleneck to integration across many key fields in biology, including genomics, systems biology, development, medicine, evolution, ecology, and systematics. Here we survey the current phenomics landscape, including data resources and handling, and the progress that has been made to accurately capture relevant data descriptions for phenotypes. We present an example of the kind of integration across domains that computable phenotypes would enable, and we call upon the broader biology community, publishers, and relevant funding agencies to support efforts to surmount today’s data barriers and facilitate analytical reproducibility.
59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
Duplications and losses in gene families of rust pathogens highlight putative effectors
Rust fungi are a group of fungal pathogens that cause some of the world's most destructive diseases of trees and crops. A shared characteristic among rust fungi is obligate biotrophy, the inability to complete a lifecycle without a host. This dependence on a host species likely affects patterns of gene expansion, contraction, and innovation within rust pathogen genomes. The establishment of disease by biotrophic pathogens is reliant upon effector proteins that are encoded in the fungal genome and secreted from the pathogen into the host's cell apoplast or within the cells. This study uses a comparative genomic approach to elucidate putative effectors and determine their evolutionary histories. We used OrthoMCL to identify nearly 20,000 gene families in proteomes of 16 diverse fungal species, which include 15 basidiomycetes and one ascomycete. We inferred patterns of duplication and loss for each gene family and identified families with distinctive patterns of expansion/contraction associated with the evolution of rust fungal genomes. To recognize potential contributors for the unique features of rust pathogens, we identified families harboring secreted proteins that: (i) arose or expanded in rust pathogens relative to other fungi, or (ii) contracted or were lost in rust fungal genomes. While the origin of rust fungi appears to be associated with considerable gene loss, there are many gene duplications associated with each sampled rust fungal genome. We also highlight two putative effector gene families that have expanded in Cqf that we hypothesize have roles in pathogenicity.
60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗