Ribosomal DNA sequence heterogeneity reflects intraspecies phylogenies and predicts genome structure in two contrasting yeast species

West, Claire ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7649-9600, James, Stephen A, Davey, Robert P, Dicks, Jo and Roberts, Ian N (2014) Ribosomal DNA sequence heterogeneity reflects intraspecies phylogenies and predicts genome structure in two contrasting yeast species. Systematic Biology, 63 (4). pp. 543-554. ISSN 1063-5157

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Abstract

The ribosomal RNA encapsulates a wealth of evolutionary information, including genetic variation that can be used to discriminate between organisms at a wide range of taxonomic levels. For example, the prokaryotic 16S rDNA sequence is very widely used both in phylogenetic studies and as a marker in metagenomic surveys and the internal transcribed spacer region, frequently used in plant phylogenetics, is now recognized as a fungal DNA barcode. However, this widespread use does not escape criticism, principally due to issues such as difficulties in classification of paralogous versus orthologous rDNA units and intragenomic variation, both of which may be significant barriers to accurate phylogenetic inference. We recently analyzed data sets from the Saccharomyces Genome Resequencing Project, characterizing rDNA sequence variation within multiple strains of the baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and its nearest wild relative Saccharomyces paradoxus in unprecedented detail. Notably, both species possess single locus rDNA systems. Here, we use these new variation datasets to assess whether a more detailed characterization of the rDNA locus can alleviate the second of these phylogenetic issues, sequence heterogeneity, while controlling for the first. We demonstrate that a strong phylogenetic signal exists within both datasets and illustrate how they can be used, with existing methodology, to estimate intraspecies phylogenies of yeast strains consistent with those derived from whole-genome approaches. We also describe the use of partial Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, a type of sequence variation found only in repetitive genomic regions, in identifying key evolutionary features such as genome hybridization events and show their consistency with whole-genome Structure analyses. We conclude that our approach can transform rDNA sequence heterogeneity from a problem to a useful source of evolutionary information, enabling the estimation of highly accurate phylogenies of closely related organisms, and discuss how it could be extended to future studies of multilocus rDNA systems. [concerted evolution; genome hydridisation; phylogenetic analysis; ribosomal DNA; whole genome sequencing; yeast].

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: © The Author(s) 2014. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the Society of Systematic Biologists. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Uncontrolled Keywords: fungal dna,ribosomal dna,genetic heterogeneity,genetic variation,fungal genome,phylogeny,single nucleotide polymorphism,saccharomyces
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School
Faculty of Science > School of Computing Sciences
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 24 Sep 2016 00:42
Last Modified: 22 Oct 2022 01:29
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/60191
DOI: 10.1093/sysbio/syu019

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