Molecular Evolution and Population Genetic Analysis of Candidate Female Reproductive Genes in Drosophila

¹ University of California, Riverside
² University of Washington

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: tpanhuis{at}jsd.claremont.edu.

Submitted on November 18, 2005
Revised on February 14, 2006
Accepted on 1 June 2006

	Abstract

Molecular analyses in several taxa have consistently shown that genes involved in reproduction are rapidly evolving and subjected to positive selection. The mechanism behind this evolution is not clear, but several proposed hypotheses involve the co-evolution between males and females. In Drosophila, several male reproductive proteins (Acps) involved in male-male and male-female interactions show evidence of rapid adaptive evolution. What has been missing from the Drosophila literature, is the identification and analysis of female reproductive genes. Recently, an evolutionary expressed sequence tag analysis of Drosophila female reproductive tract genes identified 169 candidate female reproductive genes. Many of these candidate genes still await further molecular analysis and independent verification of positive selection. Our goal was to expand our understanding of the molecular evolution of Drosophila female reproductive genes with a detailed polymorphism and divergence study on seven additional candidate female reproductive genes and a re-analysis of two genes from the above study. We demonstrate that six candidate female genes out of the nine genes surveyed show evidence of positive selection using both polymorphism and divergence data. One of these proteins (CG17012) is modeled to reveal that the sites under selection fall around and within the active site of this protease, suggesting potential differences between species. We discuss our results in light of potential function as well as interaction with male reproductive proteins.

Key Words: Acps, Drosophila, molecular evolution, population genetics, reproductive proteins

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