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Multiple Origins of Cytologically Identical Chromosome Inversions in the Anopheles gambiae Complex
Adalgisa Caccone1,a,b, Gi-Sik Min1,a, and Jeffrey R. Powellaa Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8106
b Dipartimento di Biologia, II Università di Roma "Tor Vergata," Rome, Italy
Corresponding author: Jeffrey R. Powell, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 165 Prospect St., Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8106., jeffrey.powell{at}yale.edu (E-mail).
Communicating editor: W. F. EANES
| ABSTRACT |
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For more than 60 years, evolutionary cytogeneticists have been using naturally occurring chromosomal inversions to infer phylogenetic histories, especially in insects with polytene chromosomes. The validity of this method is predicated on the assumption that inversions arise only once in the history of a lineage, so that sharing a particular inversion implies shared common ancestry. This assumption of monophyly has been generally validated by independent data. We present the first clear evidence that naturally occurring inversions, identical at the level of light microscopic examination of polytene chromosomes, may not always be monophyletic. The evidence comes from DNA sequence analyses of regions within or very near the breakpoints of an inversion called the 2La that is found in the Anopheles gambiae complex. Two species, A. merus and A. arabiensis, which are fixed for the "same" inversion, do not cluster with each other in a phylogenetic analysis of the DNA sequences within the 2La. Rather, A. merus 2La is most closely related to strains of A. gambiae homozygous for the 2L+. A. gambiae and A. merus are sister taxa, the immediate ancestor was evidently homozygous 2L+, and A. merus became fixed for an inversion cytologically identical to that in A. arabiensis. A. gambiae is polymorphic for 2La/2L+, and the 2La in this species is nearly identical at the DNA level to that in A. arabiensis, consistent with the growing evidence that introgression has or is occurring between these two most important vectors of malaria in the world. The parallel evolution of the "same" inversion may be promoted by the presence of selectively important genes within the breakpoints.
DEDUCING phylogenetic relationships based on chromosomal inversions stems from the classic work of ![]()
Another test of the monophyly of inversions has been to study gene sequences that lie within the breakpoints. This approach is predicated on the assumption that in addition to being monophyletic, inversions effectively suppress recombination between and immediately adjacent to the breakpoints. Thus, the allele captured by the single inversion event will have a phylogenetic history identical to the inversion itself. When this has been attempted, in all cases until now, the gene tree deduced from DNA sequences within breakpoints has been congruent with the inversion tree (![]()
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Here, we provide the first evidence that cytologically identical, naturally occurring inversions may not always be monophyletic. The evidence comes from a mosquito group, the Anopheles gambiae complex. This complex consists of six presently described species that are all native to sub-Saharan Africa. Many naturally occurring inversions exist in the group, both as floating polymorphisms and fixed differences among species (![]()
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If the network in Figure 1A accurately reflects the phylogenetic history of these species, it is extremely difficult to explain the phylogenetic distribution of the 2La inversion. This inversion is fixed in A. merus and A. arabiensis and is polymorphic along with the 2L+ arrangement in A. gambiae; the 2L+ arrangement is fixed in all other species. To maintain the hypothesis of monophyly of naturally occurring inversions, two hypotheses can be erected. First, the 2La/2L+ polymorphism may be an ancestral state with the alternative arrangements becoming fixed in the different species while remaining polymorphic in one species. Second, the 2La may have arisen in one species and may have been transferred via introgression among the species, a phenomenon thought to occur at least between A. gambiae and A. arabiensis (![]()
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| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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Mosquito strains:
The number of strains used in this study are listed in Table 1. Species names are abbreviated as follows: gam, gambiae; ara, arabiensis; mer, merus; mel, melas; and quad, quadriannulatus. Strain names, with their acronyms used in other publications (![]()
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DNA sequencing:
Total DNA was extracted from frozen or Carnoy preserved specimens using a modified Drosophila extraction protocol (![]()
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Data analysis:
Sequences from multiple individuals or multiple clones from the same strain were combined into a single consensus sequence for each strain, using polymorphic designations for sites variable among individuals or clones. Sequences were aligned by eye and by using CLUSTAL W (![]()
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| RESULTS |
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We sequenced a total of 4493 bp for four DNA regions between or very close to the breakpoints of the 2La inversion (Figure 1B) from multiple individuals belonging to several strains of five species of the A. gambiae complex. Table 2 summarizes the levels of sequence variation and the potential phylogenetic information of variable sites. A total of 211 variable sites occur across all strains. The variability of the four regions is quite similar, ranging from 3.9 to 5.4% of all sites. For the two regions with open reading frames (pkm122 and pkm2), the majority of variation is in the introns, where ~20% of sites vary. Only ~3% of the sites in the coding regions vary, with silent substitutions being most common. Although all four regions were obtained by using sequence information from cDNA clones, both pkm79 and pkm129 include multiple stop codons in all reading frames in all the species studied and in the original A. gambiae clone, precluding any further partitioning of variability among different functional regions. (We suspect that the lack of open reading frames in what were thought to be cDNA clones results from some kind of cloning artifact; the in situ mapping was done with the identical clones we used, so there is no doubt about the chromosomal location.) Intraspecific variability was very low, with a maximum of 4 variable sites between conspecific strains for any region. Variable sites occurred mostly as fixed differences between species and between different karyotypes (2L+/+ vs. 2La/a). Of the 169 potentially informative sites, 33 synapomorphies are shared between A. arabiensis and A. gambiae 2La/a strains, while only one synapomorphy groups A. merus with the other 2La/a strains, i.e., makes the 2La monophyletic (Table 2).
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Figure 2 and Figure 3 show the results of the phylogenetic analyses as majority rule MP consensus trees after 1000 bootstrap replicates. In Figure 2, the four DNA regions were analyzed separately, combining individuals from the same strains but keeping strains distinct. Figure 3 is the combined analysis with a single consensus sequence for each species except A. gambiae. Trees with the same topologies were obtained by MP, NJ, and ML analyses. Further details on the MP analyses are provided in Table 3.
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Conspecific strains of all the species (except A. gambiae) always cluster together when each DNA fragment is analyzed separately, implying that intraspecific variation does not cloud interspecific or interinversion differences (Figure 2). In three out of four DNA regions (pkm122, pkm129, and pkm2), A. gambiae individuals homozygous for 2L+ or the 2La cluster on distant branches of the trees. However, not all the other strains carrying what is cytologically the same inversion karyotype (2La/a) cluster together. A. merus clearly does not cluster with the other 2La/a strains, but it clusters with A. gambiae 2L+/+. This topology is confirmed by the number of steps separating the MP tree from the shortest tree having the 2La inversion monophyletic (Table 3). The topology of the MP tree for pkm79 is poorly supported (low bootstrap values, short branch lengths, and only one step separating the MP tree from a tree with the taxa carrying the 2La inversion in a single clade). However, though weak, the pkm79 tree is still not consistent with the monophyly of 2La because the A. merus strains do not cluster with the A. arabiensis and A. gambiae a/a clade. The clustering among the other taxa is less uniform across the four DNA regions. Two fragments (pkm122 and pkm129) support clustering A. quadriannulatus with the A. arabiensis- A. gambiae a/a clade, while pkm2 favors A. melas as sister taxa of the same clade.
The topology of the tree obtained by combining all data confirms the results obtained from the single-region trees (Figure 3). The arabiensis-gambiae 2La/a and merus-gambiae 2L+/+ clades are very strongly supported with bootstrap percentages of 99 or 100 for all phylogenetic methods, as well as the relatively long branch lengths that define each clade: 53 for the arabiensis-gambiae 2La/a clade and 12 for the merus-gambiae 2L+/+ clade. Both MP and ML trees were statistically significantly better than the shortest trees with A. merus in the same clade as A. arabiensis and A. gambiae a/a, as determined by the ![]()
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The anomalous phylogenetic position of A. merus, which does not cluster with the other 2La carriers but is the sister taxon of A. gambiae 2L+/+, was also confirmed by genetic distance comparisons (Table 4). The average genetic distances between strains with the same 2La arrangement (excluding A. merus) is 0.014 (SD = 0.004) for the combined data set. The average distance of A. merus to gam+/+ is 0.011, whereas the average distance of A. merus to the other 2La/a strains is 0.027 (SD = 0.004), which is comparable to the average distance (excluding A. merus) between 2L+/+ and 2La/a strains (D = 0.024, SD = 0.004).
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| DISCUSSION |
|---|
These results are incompatible with the hypothesis of monophyly of the 2La inversion in this species group. The evidence that the 2La fixed in A. merus and A. arabiensis are the "same" inversion is based on the usually accepted criteria: Under light microscopic examination, the banding patterns in polytene chromosomes are identical (![]()
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An alternative to polyphyly would be that the ancestral lineage to the whole group was polymorphic for 2La/+ and remained polymorphic in A. gambiae while becoming fixed in the other species. If so, it is still difficult to rectify the close affinity of the A. merus 2La to the A. gambiae 2L+ but not to A. arabiensis 2La. If monophyletic, all copies of 2La should coalesce into a common ancestor before they coalesce with any 2L+. Moreover, if the ancestral gambiae/merus lineage was polymorphic for 2La/+, the copies of 2La in A. gambiae and A. merus should be more similar to one another than either is to 2La in A. arabiensis, a prediction that is clearly at odds with our data. One could hypothesize that in the ancestral gambiae/merus lineage, selection acted to bring about convergence of DNA sequences within 2La and 2L+. However, virtually all our analyses are based on noncoding DNA or synonymous substitutions in coding regions. These are the kinds of substitutions thought to be least subject to selection.
Gene conversion is another alternative; i.e., there was gene conversion in the lineage common to A. gambiae and A. merus such that the 2La acquired sequences from the 2L+. Gene conversion between inversions has been documented (![]()
10% of an inversion has been found to be converted in any single chromosome. Given that all four regions we studied showed a very similar pattern, this would seem to be an unlikely explanation.
What then is the likely history of the 2La distribution in this group? The most parsimonious scenario is that the lineage common to A. merus and A. gambiae had the 2L+ arrangement. After these species split, A. merus independently generated a second chromosome inversion indistinguishable from the A. arabiensis 2La, and subsequently, it became fixed in this species. There is increasing evidence that A. gambiae and A. arabiensis are or recently were undergoing gene exchange, most likely through introgressive hybridization (![]()
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Although it has generally been argued that the arrangements designated + in the gambiae complex are the ancestral state (![]()
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Cases of different inversions sharing one breakpoint are not uncommon, including among these species of mosquitoes (![]()
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In addition to the basic interest in the origin and dynamics of inversion polymorphisms in insects, the history of inversions and the issue of introgression have important public health implications for this group of mosquitoes. Members of the gambiae complex account for the majority of transmission of malaria in Africa, a continent with >85% of worldwide cases of malaria (![]()
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Is multiple origin of cytologically indistinguishable inversions common? Given the general consistency of the hypothesis of monophyly with a variety of data (discussed in the Introduction), it would seem that this is not common. That occasionally an inversion that is cytologically indistinguishable from a preexisting inversion can be generated and become established in a species is not totally surprising, although this is the first documentation of such an event. It does not invalidate the general assumption of monophyly that is the basis for phylogeny reconstruction. However, this example does serve as a caution that the assumption is not universally true.
| FOOTNOTES |
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1 These authors contributed equally to this work. ![]()
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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We thank Etsuko Moriyama for assistance in analyses and comments about the manuscript; Mario Coluzzi, Alessandra della Torre, Nora Besansky, and Frank Collins for mosquitoes; and Kostas Mathiopoulos for the cDNA clones and sequence information before publication. David Swofford kindly made available PAUP* before its formal release. This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (to J.R.P.) and the European Community, EU INCO project no. ERB3514PL961817 (to A.C.).
Manuscript received March 15, 1998; Accepted for publication July 13, 1998.
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70%. Numbers on branches are the number of steps separating each node in the MP tree.



