Nature Communications (Jul 2019)

Conditional expression explains molecular evolution of social genes in a microbe

  • Janaina Lima de Oliveira,
  • Atahualpa Castillo Morales,
  • Balint Stewart,
  • Nicole Gruenheit,
  • Jennifer Engelmoer,
  • Suzanne Battom Brown,
  • Reinaldo A. de Brito,
  • Laurence D. Hurst,
  • Araxi O. Urrutia,
  • Christopher R. L. Thompson,
  • Jason B. Wolf

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11237-2
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

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Genetic diversity in social genes is expected to be shaped by conflict. Here, the authors show that in Dictyostelium discoideum, social genes in fact exhibit diversification patterns consistent with relaxed purifying selection, likely due to their expression only in intermittent social generations.