Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 346, Issue 6215, Pages 1335-+Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1254449
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Funding
- NSF [MCB-1052500, DEB-1020865, MCB-0841821, DUE-0920151, DBI-0905714, DEB-1242260]
- Institute for Genomics, Biocomputing and Biotechnology at Mississippi State University
- Australian Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation [RIRDC PRJ-000549, RIRDC PRJ-005355, RIRDC PRJ-002461]
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- National Institutes of Health [1U41HG007234-01, 1U41HG006992-2, 5U01HG004695]
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation [3383]
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Environmental Biology [1257786] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Direct For Education and Human Resources
- Division Of Undergraduate Education [0920151] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Div Of Molecular and Cellular Bioscience
- Direct For Biological Sciences [0841821] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Office Of The Director
- EPSCoR [0903787] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [22128003, 24570243] Funding Source: KAKEN
- ICREA Funding Source: Custom
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To provide context for the diversification of archosaurs-the group that includes crocodilians, dinosaurs, and birds-we generated draft genomes of three crocodilians: Alligator mississippiensis (the American alligator), Crocodylus porosus (the saltwater crocodile), and Gavialis gangeticus (the Indian gharial). We observed an exceptionally slow rate of genome evolution within crocodilians at all levels, including nucleotide substitutions, indels, transposable element content and movement, gene family evolution, and chromosomal synteny. When placed within the context of related taxa including birds and turtles, this suggests that the common ancestor of all of these taxa also exhibited slow genome evolution and that the comparatively rapid evolution is derived in birds. The data also provided the opportunity to analyze heterozygosity in crocodilians, which indicates a likely reduction in population size for all three taxa through the Pleistocene. Finally, these data combined with newly published bird genomes allowed us to reconstruct the partial genome of the common ancestor of archosaurs, thereby providing a tool to investigate the genetic starting material of crocodilians, birds, and dinosaurs.
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