A-to-I RNA editing in honeybees shows signals of adaptation and convergent evolution
Yuange Duan,
Shengqian Dou,
Hagit T. Porath,
Jiaxing Huang,
Eli Eisenberg,
Jian Lu
Affiliations
Yuange Duan
State Key Laboratory of Protein and Plant Gene Research, Center for Bioinformatics, School of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China; Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China
Shengqian Dou
State Key Laboratory of Protein and Plant Gene Research, Center for Bioinformatics, School of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China
Hagit T. Porath
The Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel
Jiaxing Huang
Key Laboratory for Insect-Pollinator Biology of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Institute of Apicultural Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China
Eli Eisenberg
Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy and Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel; Corresponding author
Jian Lu
State Key Laboratory of Protein and Plant Gene Research, Center for Bioinformatics, School of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China; Corresponding author
Summary: Social insects exhibit extensive phenotypic diversities among the genetically similar individuals, suggesting a role for the epigenetic regulations beyond the genome level. The ADAR-mediated adenosine-to-inosine (A-to-I) RNA editing, an evolutionarily conserved mechanism, facilitates adaptive evolution by expanding proteomic diversities. Here, we characterize the A-to-I RNA editome of honeybees (Apis mellifera), identifying 407 high-confidence A-to-I editing sites. Editing is most abundant in the heads and shows signatures for positive selection. Editing behavior differs between foragers and nurses, suggesting a role for editing in caste differentiation. Although only five sites are conserved between bees and flies, an unexpectedly large number of genes exhibit editing in both species, albeit at different locations, including the nonsynonymous auto-editing of Adar. This convergent evolution, where the same target genes independently acquire recoding events in distant diverged clades, together with the signals of adaptation observed in honeybees alone, further supports the notion of recoding being adaptive.
