Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 106, Issue 44, Pages 18861-18866Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0908404106
Keywords
horizontal gene transfer; selfish gene; VDE; meiosis; haploid-diploid cycle
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Funding
- Science and Technology Foundation of Japan
- 21st Century Center of Excellence
- Fusion of Science and Technology
- Japan Society for Promotion of Science [21370001]
- Graduate University for Advanced Studies (Sokendai)
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [21370001] Funding Source: KAKEN
- Div Of Biological Infrastructure
- Direct For Biological Sciences [0832858] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Homing endonuclease genes are ``selfish'' mobile genetic elements whose endonuclease promotes the spread of its own gene by creating a break at a specific target site and using the host machinery to repair the break by copying and inserting the gene at this site. Horizontal transfer across the boundary of a species or population within which mating takes place has been thought to be necessary for their evolutionary persistence. This is based on the assumption that they will become fixed in a host population, where opportunities of homing will disappear, and become susceptible to degeneration. To test this hypothesis, we modeled behavior of a homing endonuclease gene that moves during meiosis through double-strand break repair. We mathematically explored conditions for persistence of the homing endonuclease gene and elucidated their parameter dependence as phase diagrams. We found that, if the cost of the pseudogene is lower than that of the homing endonuclease gene, the 2 forms can persist in a population through autonomous periodic oscillation. If the cost of the pseudogene is higher, 2 types of dynamics appear that enable evolutionary persistence: bistability dependent on initial frequency or fixation irrespective of initial frequency. The prediction of long persistence in the absence of horizontal transfer was confirmed by stochastic simulations in finite populations. The average time to extinction of the endonuclease gene was found to be thousands of meiotic generations or more based on realistic parameter values. These results provide a solid theoretical basis for an understanding of these and other extremely selfish elements. POPULATION BIOLOGY
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