Instances of Orphan Coding Sequences (“New genes” and New exons) Discovered in Sequenced Genomes
(Long, Deutsch et al. 2003; Kaessmann 2010; Guerzoni and McLysaght 2011; Tautz and Domazet-Loso 2011; Carvunis, Rolland et al. 2012; Chen, Krinsky et al. 2013; Long, VanKuren et al. 2013; Neme and Tautz 2013; Light, Basile et al. 2014; Andersson, Jerlstrom-Hultqvist et al. 2015; McLysaght and Guerzoni 2015; Basile, Sachenkova et al. 2017; Schmitz and Bornberg-Bauer 2017)

Genome Source

Reference(s)

Viruses (bacteriophages) “Almost one-third of all ORFs in 1,456 complete virus genomes correspond to ORFans, a figure significantly larger than that observed in prokaryotes… 38.4% of phage ORFs have no homologs in other phages, and 30.1% have no homologs neither in the viral nor in the prokaryotic world…”

(Yin and Fischer 2008)

“Virus de novo genes…in which an existing gene has been "overprinted" by a new open reading frame, a process that generates a new protein-coding gene overlapping the ancestral gene… young de novo genes have a different codon usage from the rest of the genome…evolve rapidly and are under positive or weak purifying selection...In contrast to young de novo genes, older de novo genes have a codon usage that is similar to the rest of the genome.”

(Sabath, Wagner et al. 2012; Pavesi, Magiorkinis et al. 2013)

Prokaryotes (20,000 orphan sequences) “…only 2.8% of all microbial ORFans have detectable homologs in viruses, while the percentage of non-ORFans with detectable homologs in viruses is 7.9%, a significantly higher figure.”

(Yin and Fischer 2006)

Escherichia coli O157:H7 (EHEC): 72 genes are taxonomically restricted and, therefore, appear to have evolved relatively recently de novo”…“origin of a new gene through overprinting in Escherichia coli K12.”

(Delaye, Deluna et al. 2008; Neuhaus, Landstorfer et al. 2016)

Yeast – “BSC4 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae…encoding a 132-amino-acid-long peptide… no homologous ORF in…closely related species …Because the corresponding noncoding sequences in S. paradoxus, S. mikatae, and S. bayanus also transcribe, we propose that a new de novo protein-coding gene may have evolved from a previously expressed noncoding sequence.”

(Cai, Zhao et al. 2008)

 

Yeast and Drosophila protein C-termini - the co-option of short segments of noncoding sequence into the C-termini of existing proteins via the loss of a stop codon “…54 examples of C-terminal extensions in Saccharomyces and 28 in Drosophila, all of them recent enough to still be polymorphic…Four of the Saccharomyces C-terminal extensions (to ADH1, ARP8, TPM2, and PIS1)…are predicted to lead to significant modification of a protein domain structure.”

(Andreatta, Levine et al. 2015)

Green multicellular algae Chlamydomonas and Volvox carteri: PHD domain added to condensin II by exonization of mobile DNA sequences; 141 retrogene candidates in total in both genomes, with their fraction being significantly higher in the multicellular Volvox. Majority of the retrogene candidates showed signatures of functional constraints, thus indicating their functionality. Detailed analyses of the identified retrogene candidates, their parental genes, and homologs of both, revealed that most of the retrogene candidates were derived from ancient retroposition events in the common ancestor of the two algae and that the parental genes were subsequently lost from the respective lineages, making many retrogenes 'orphan'.”

(Jakalski, Takeshita et al. 2016; Philippsen, Avaca-Crusca et al. 2016)

Plasmodium vivax “…recent de novo origin of at least 13 protein-coding genes in the genome of Plasmodium vivax… five of the genes identified in our analysis contain introns…likely evolved from previously intergenic regions together with the coding sequences.”

(Yang and Huang 2011)

Nematode Pristionchus pacificus; “3818-7545 (39-76 %) of orphan genes are under negative selection”

(Prabh and Rodelsperger 2016)

Drosophila melanogaster: “There is a significant excess of retrogenes that originate from the X chromosome and retropose to autosomes; new genes retroposed from autosomes are scarce. Further, we found that most of these X-derived autosomal retrogenes had evolved a testis expression pattern.”

(Betran, Thornton et al. 2002)

Drosophila melanogaster – “142 segregating and 106 fixed testis-expressed de novo genes in a population sample of Drosophila melanogaster…appear to derive primarily from ancestral intergenic, unexpressed open reading frames (ORFs), with natural selection playing a significant role in their spread.”

(Levine, Jones et al. 2006; Zhao, Saelao et al. 2014)

Drosophila melanogaster – “…six putatively protein-coding de novo genes described in Drosophila melanogaster…two de novo genes emerged from novel long non-coding RNAs…four other de novo genes evolved a translated open reading frame and transcription…suggesting that nascent open reading frames (proto-ORFs)…can contribute to the emergence of a new de novo gene... Sequence and structural evolution of de novo genes was rapid compared to nearby genes...”

(Reinhardt, Wanjiru et al. 2013)

 

Insects: “…comparing 30 arthropod genomes, focusing in particular on seven recently sequenced ant genomes…comparison between social Hymenoptera (ants and bees) and nonsocial Diptera (flies and mosquitoes)…recently split lineages undergo accelerated genomic reorganization, including the rapid gain of many orphan genes…between the two insect orders Hymenoptera and Diptera, orphan genes are more abundant and emerge more rapidly in Hymenoptera, in particular, in leaf-cutter ants. With respect to intragenomic localization, we find that ant orphan genes show little clustering…”

(Wissler, Gadau et al. 2013)

Entelegyne spiders (Araneae, Entelegynae): “…transcriptomes of six entelegyne spider species from three genera (Cicurina travisae, C. vibora, Habronattus signatus, H. ustulatus, Nesticus bishopi, and N. cooperi)… between ~ 550 and 1,100 unique orphan genes were found in each genus.”

(Carlson and Hedin 2017)

Rodent: 75 murine genes (69 mouse genes and 6 rat genes) for which there is good evidence of de novo origin since the divergence of mouse and rat. Each of these genes is only found in either the mouse or rat lineages, with no candidate orthologs nor evidence for potentially-unannotated orthologs in the other lineage…For 11 of the 75 candidate novel genes we could identify a mouse-specific mutation that led to the creation of the open reading frame (ORF) specifically in mouse…A large number of them (51 out of 69 mouse genes and 3 out of 6 rat genes) also overlap with other genes, either within introns, or on the opposite strand.”

(Murphy and McLysaght 2012)

Mouse and human: “over 5000 new genes were integrated into the ancestral GGI {gene-gene interaction} networks of human and mouse; new genes gradually acquire increasing number of gene partners; some human-specific genes evolved into hub structure with critical phenotypic effects.”

(Zhang, Landback et al. 2015)

Primates: “an unexpected important role of transposable elements in the formation of novel protein-coding genes in the genomes of primates.”

(Toll-Riera, Castelo et al. 2009)

Human and Chimpanzee: “…retrocopies of coding transcripts to generate proteins with novel N-terminal domains. Examples include thymopoietin beta (TMPO), eukaryotic translation initiation factor 3 subunit 5 (EIF3F), and the 5'-inverted retrocopy of small nuclear ribonucleoprotein polypeptide N (SNRPN).

(Kojima and Okada 2009)

Humans: “…one human-specific de novo protein-coding gene, FLJ33706 (alternative gene symbol C20orf203)…originated from noncoding DNA sequences: insertion of repeat elements especially Alu contributed to the formation of the first coding exon and six standard splice junctions on the branch leading to humans and chimpanzees, and two subsequent substitutions in the human lineage escaped two stop codons and created an open reading frame of 194 amino acids.”

(Li, Zhang et al. 2010)

Humans: “…we identify 60 new protein-coding genes that originated de novo on the human lineage since divergence from the chimpanzee…RNA-seq data indicate that these genes have their highest expression levels in the cerebral cortex and testes…”

(Wu, Irwin et al. 2011)

Humans: “we identified 24 hominoid-specific de novo protein-coding genes with precise origination timing in vertebrate phylogeny… most of the hominoid-specific de novo protein-coding genes encoded polyadenylated non-coding RNAs in rhesus macaque or chimpanzee with a similar transcript structure and correlated tissue expression profile…the majority of these hominoid-specific de novo protein-coding genes appear to have acquired a regulated transcript structure and expression profile before acquiring coding potential…the coding genes in human often showed higher transcriptional abundance than their non-coding counterparts in rhesus macaque.”

(Xie, Zhang et al. 2012)

Humans: “the de novo origin of at least three human protein-coding genes since the divergence with chimp…chimp, gorilla, gibbon, and macaque share the same disabling sequence difference, supporting the inference that the ancestral sequence was noncoding…We estimate that 0.075% of human genes may have originated through this mechanism leading to a total expectation of 18 such cases in a genome of 24,000 protein-coding genes.”

 (Knowles and McLysaght 2009)

Humans: “We have found 426 different annotated young domains, totalling 995 domain occurrences, which represent about 12.3% of all human domains. We have observed that 61.3% of them arose in newly formed genes, while the remaining 38.7% are found combined with older domains…Young domains are preferentially located at the N-terminus of the protein… young domains show significantly higher non-synonymous to synonymous substitution rates than older domains…”

(Toll-Riera and Alba 2013)

Arabidopsis: “…lineage-specific genes within the nuclear (1761 genes) and mitochondrial (28 genes) genomes are identified…Almost a quarter of lineage-specific genes originate from non-lineage-specific paralogs, while the origins of ~10% of lineage-specific genes are partly derived from DNA exapted from transposable elements (twice the proportion observed for non-lineage-specific genes). Lineage-specific genes are also enriched in genes that have overlapping CDS, which is consistent with such novel genes arising from overprinting. Over half of the subset of the 958 lineage-specific genes found only in Arabidopsis thaliana have alignments to intergenic regions in Arabidopsis lyrata, consistent with either de novo origination or differential gene loss and retention… lineage-specific genes have high tissue specificity and low expression levels across multiple tissues and developmental stages. Finally, stress responsiveness is identified as a distinct feature of Brassicaceae-specific genes; where these LSGs are enriched for genes responsive to a wide range of abiotic stresses…”

(Donoghue, Keshavaiah et al. 2011)

Arabidopsis: “…we find that new genes in plants show a bias in expression to mature pollen, and are also enriched in a gene co-expression module that correlates with mature pollen in Arabidopsis thaliana. Transposable elements are significantly enriched in the new genes, and the high activity of transposable elements in the vegetative nucleus, compared with the germ cells, suggests that new genes are most easily generated in the vegetative nucleus in the mature pollen. We propose an "out of pollen" hypothesis for the origin of new genes in flowering plants.”

(Wu, Wang et al. 2014)

 

 

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