Tetrapod V1R-like ora genes in an early-diverging ray-finned fish species: the canonical six ora gene repertoire of teleost fish resulted from gene loss in a larger ancestral repertoire
Abstract
Chemical senses serve a multitude of essential functions across the animal kingdom. Vertebrates employ four GPCR families to detect odors, among them the v1r/ora gene family. The V1R family is known to evolve rapidly in the lobe-finned lineage giving rise to tetrapods, but the homologous ORA family consists of just six highly conserved genes in teleost fish, with direct orthologs in the lobe-finned fish coelacanth. Thus, the teleost repertoire of six canonical ora genes was assumed to be the ancestral feature before the divergence of ray-finned and lobe-finned fish. So far, this hypothesis has not been tested with earlier diverging ray-finned fish. We have newly identified the complete ora gene repertoires of five teleost species, and of spotted gar, a basal ray-finned fish, using thorough data mining and extensive phylogenetic analysis. The genomes of eight further teleost species were re-analyzed for their ORA repertoires. We report that direct orthologs of the six canonical ora genes (ora1-6) were present in all newly analyzed species, with faithfully preserved exon/intron structure and mostly preserved genomic arrangement in symmetric pairs for ora1-4. In four teleost species including medaka and cave fish we observe specie...Continue Reading
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