The pea aphid phylome: a complete catalogue of evolutionary histories and arthropod orthology and paralogy relationships for Acyrthosiphon pisum genes

Phylogenetic analyses serve many purposes, including the establishment of orthology relationships, the prediction of protein function and the detection of important evolutionary events. Within the context of the sequencing of the genome of the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum, we undertook a phylogenetic analysis for every protein of this species. The resulting phylome includes the evolutionary relationships of all predicted aphid proteins and their homologues among 13 other fully-sequenced arthropods and three out-group species. Subsequent analyses have revealed multiple gene expansions that are specific to aphids and have served to transfer functional annotations to 4058 pea aphid genes that display one-to-one orthology relationships with Drosophila melanogaster annotated genes. All phylogenies and alignments are accessible through the PhylomeDB database. Here we provide a description of this dataset and provide some examples on how can it be exploited.