Abstract
The Brazilian short-tailed grey opossum Monodelphis domestica was the first marsupial genome to be sequenced. The high quality draft genome sequence has provided significant new understanding of mammal genome evolution, suggesting that innovation in protein coding genes occurs primarily by diversification of existing gene families and that truly novel protein coding genes are rare. The opossum genome also highlights the magnitude of the role transposable elements have had in shaping gene regulatory networks, including X chromosome inactivation. The rate of innovation of new conserved non-coding elements is 20 fold higher than for protein coding genes, and a substantial portion of the novel eutherian specific conserved non-coding elements can be attributed to arising from transposable elements. Combined with insights into the role of recombination on genome composition and structure, the opossum genome has provided unique insight into the forces that shaped the genomes of all mammals.
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Glossary
- N50
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The size of scaffold or contig for which half of all bases are in scaffolds or contigs that are smaller.
- Neofunctionalization
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The mutation of a duplicated copy of a gene to undertake a completely novel function (distinct from subfunctionalization where the role of the gene in specific tissues, or one function of a multidomain protein is split between the duplicate copies of the gene).
- Exaptation
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The co-option by selection for a new function of a structure that has evolved under selective pressure for an unrelated function or under neutral conditions with no functional fitness advantage (Gould and Vrba, 1982).
- LINE
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Long Interspersed Nuclear Element, a family of retrotransposons common in mammals which is transcribed as RNA and intergrates as additional reverse transcribed copies in genome.
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Wakefield, M.J., Papenfuss, A.T. (2010). Insight into Evolution of Gene Regulation Networks from the Opossum Genome. In: Deakin, J., Waters, P., Marshall Graves, J. (eds) Marsupial Genetics and Genomics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9023-2_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9023-2_7
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