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Samuel H Lewis, Claire L Webster, Heli Salmela, Darren J Obbard, Repeated Duplication of Argonaute2 Is Associated with Strong Selection and Testis Specialization in Drosophila, Genetics, Volume 204, Issue 2, 1 October 2016, Pages 757–769, https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.116.192336
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Abstract
Argonaute2 (Ago2) is a rapidly evolving nuclease in the Drosophila melanogaster RNA interference (RNAi) pathway that targets viruses and transposable elements in somatic tissues. Here we reconstruct the history of Ago2 duplications across the D. obscura group and use patterns of gene expression to infer new functional specialization. We show that some duplications are old, shared by the entire species group, and that losses may be common, including previously undetected losses in the lineage leading to D. pseudoobscura. We find that while the original (syntenic) gene copy has generally retained the ancestral ubiquitous expression pattern, most of the novel Ago2 paralogs have independently specialized to testis-specific expression. Using population genetic analyses, we show that most testis-specific paralogs have significantly lower genetic diversity than the genome-wide average. This suggests recent positive selection in three different species, and model-based analyses provide strong evidence of recent hard selective sweeps in or near four of the six D. pseudoobscura Ago2 paralogs. We speculate that the repeated evolution of testis specificity in obscura group Ago2 genes, combined with their dynamic turnover and strong signatures of adaptive evolution, may be associated with highly derived roles in the suppression of transposable elements or meiotic drive. Our study highlights the lability of RNAi pathways, even within well-studied groups such as Drosophila, and suggests that strong selection may act quickly after duplication in RNAi pathways, potentially giving rise to new and unknown RNAi functions in nonmodel species.
ARGONAUTE genes are found in almost all eukaryotes, where they play a key role in antiviral immune defense, gene regulation, and genome stability. They perform this diverse range of functions through their role in RNA interference (RNAi) mechanisms, an ancient system of nucleic acid manipulation in which small RNA (sRNA) molecules guide Argonaute proteins to nucleic acid targets through base complementarity (reviewed in Meister 2013). Gene duplication has occurred throughout the evolution of the Argonaute gene family, with ancient duplication events characteristic of some lineages—such as three duplications early in plant evolution (Singh et al. 2015) and multiple expansions and losses throughout the evolution of nematodes (reviewed in Buck and Blaxter 2013) and the Diptera (Lewis et al. 2016). After duplication, Argonautes have often undergone functional divergence, involving changes in expression patterns and altered sRNA binding partners (Lu et al. 2011; Leebonoi et al. 2015; Miesen et al. 2015). Duplication early in eukaryotic evolution produced two distinct Argonaute subfamilies, Ago and Piwi, which have since been retained in the vast majority of Metazoa (Cerutti and Casas-Mollano 2006). Members of the Ago subfamily are expressed in both somatic and germline tissue, and variously bind sRNAs derived from host transcripts (miRNAs, endo-siRNAs) or transposable elements (TE endo-siRNAs) and viruses (viRNAs). In contrast, in most vertebrates and arthropods, the Piwi subfamily members are expressed primarily in association with the germline (reviewed in Ross et al. 2014), and bind sRNAs from TEs and host loci (piRNAs), suggesting that the Piwi subfamily specialized to a germline-specific role on the lineages leading to vertebrates and arthropods.
After the early divergence of the Ago and Piwi subfamilies, subsequent duplications gave rise to three Piwi subfamily members [Ago3, Aubergine (Aub), and Piwi] and two Ago subfamily members (Ago1 and Ago2) in Drosophila melanogaster. All three Piwi subfamily genes are associated with the germline and bind piRNAs derived from TEs and other repetitive genomic elements: Ago3 and Aub amplify the piRNA signal through the “Ping-Pong” cycle (reviewed in Luteijn and Ketting 2013), and Piwi suppresses transposition by directing heterochromatin formation (Sienski et al. 2012). These functional differences are associated with contrasting selective regimes, with Aub evolving under positive selection (Kolaczkowski et al. 2011) and more rapidly than Ago3 and Piwi (Obbard et al. 2009a). In contrast, Ago1 binds miRNAs and regulates gene expression by inhibiting translation and marking transcripts for degradation (reviewed in Eulalio et al. 2008). This function imposes strong selective constraint on Ago1, resulting in slow evolution and very few adaptive substitutions (Obbard et al. 2006, 2009a; Kolaczkowski et al. 2011). Finally, Ago2 binds siRNAs from viruses (viRNAs) and TEs (endo-siRNAs), and functions in gene regulation (Wen et al. 2015), dosage compensation (Menon and Meller 2012), and the ubiquitous suppression of viruses (Li et al. 2002; van Rij et al. 2006) and TEs (Chung et al. 2008; Czech et al. 2008). Ago2 also evolves under strong positive selection, with frequent selective sweeps (Obbard et al. 2006, 2009a,b, 2011; Kolaczkowski et al. 2011), possibly driven by an arms race with virus-encoded suppressors of RNAi (VSRs) (Obbard et al. 2006; Marques and Carthew 2007; van Mierlo et al. 2014).
In contrast to D. melanogaster, from which most functional knowledge of Ago2 in arthropods is derived, an expansion of Ago2 has been reported in D. pseudoobscura (Hain et al. 2010), providing an opportunity to study how the RNAi pathway evolves after duplication. Given the roles of D. melanogaster Ago2 in antiviral defense (Li et al. 2002; van Rij et al. 2006), TE suppression (Chung et al. 2008; Czech et al. 2008), dosage compensation (Menon and Meller 2012), and gene regulation (Wen et al. 2015), we hypothesized that these D. pseudoobscura Ago2 paralogs may have diverged in function. To elucidate the evolution and function of Ago2 paralogs in D. pseudoobscura and its relatives, we identified and dated Ago2 duplication events across available Drosophila genomes and transcriptomes, tested for divergence in expression patterns between the Ago2 paralogs in D. subobscura, D. obscura, and D. pseudoobscura, and quantified the evolutionary rate and positive selection acting on each of these paralogs. We find that testis specificity of Ago2 paralogs has evolved repeatedly in the obscura group, and that the majority of paralogs show evidence of recent positive selection.
Materials and Methods
Identification of Ago2 homologs in the Drosophilidae
We used tBLASTx to identify Ago2 homologs in transcriptomes and genomes of 39 species of the Drosophilidae, using previously characterized Ago2 from the closest possible relative to provide the query for each species. If blast returned partial hits, we aligned all hits from the target species to all Argonautes from the query species and assigned hits to the appropriate Ago lineage based on a neighbor-joining tree. For each query sequence, we then manually curated partial blast hits into complete genes using Geneious v5.6.2 (http://www.geneious.com, Kearse et al. 2012) (see Supplemental Material, File S3 for sequence accessions).
Additionally, we used degenerate PCR to identify Ago2 paralogs in D. azteca and D. affinis, and paralog-specific PCR with a touchdown amplification cycle to validate the Ago2 paralogs identified in D. subobscura, D. obscura, and D. pseudoobscura. For each reaction, unincorporated primers were removed with ExonucleaseI (New England Biolabs) and 5′ phosphates were removed with Antarctic Phosphatase (NEB). The PCR products were sequenced by Edinburgh Genomics using BigDye V3 reagents on a capillary sequencer (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA), and Sanger sequence reads were trimmed and assembled using Geneious v.5.6.2 (http://www.geneious.com, Kearse et al. 2012). We also used a combination of PCR and blast searches to locate D. pseudoobscura Ago2a1 and Ago2a3, which lie on the unplaced “Unknown_contig_265” in release 3.03 of the D. pseudoobscura genome (all PCR primers are detailed in Table S4).
Phylogenetic analysis of drosophilid Ago2 paralogs
To characterize the evolutionary relationships between Ago2 homologs in the Drosophilidae, we aligned sequences using translational MAFFT (Katoh et al. 2002) with default parameters (File S1). We noted that there is a high degree of codon usage bias (CUB) in D. pseudoobscura Ago2e [effective number of codons (ENC) = 34.24] and D. obscura Ago2e (ENC = 40.36), and a lesser degree in D. subobscura Ago2f (ENC = 45.63) and D. obscura Ago2f (ENC = 48.39), and comparison with genome-wide patterns of codon usage bias placed these genes in the lower half of the distribution of ENC (Figure S5). To reduce the impact of CUB, which disproportionately affects synonymous sites, we stripped all third position sites in this analysis (Behura and Severson 2013). We then inferred a gene tree using the Bayesian approach implemented in BEAST v1.8.1 (Drummond et al. 2012) under a nucleotide model, assuming a general time reversible (GTR) substitution model, variation between sites modeled by a γ-distribution with four categories, and base frequencies estimated from the data. We used the default priors for all parameters, except tree shape (for which we specified a birth–death speciation model) and the date of the Drosophila–Sophophora split. To estimate a time scale for the tree, we specified a normal distribution for the date of this node using values based on mutation rate estimates in Obbard et al. 2012, with a mean value of 32 MYA, standard deviation of 7 MYA, and lower and upper bounds of 15 MYA and 50 MYA, respectively. We ran the analysis for 50 million steps, recording samples from the posterior every 1000 steps, and inferred a maximum clade credibility tree with TreeAnnotator v1.8.1 (Drummond et al. 2012). Note that precise date estimates are not a primary focus of this study, but that other calibrations (Russo et al. 1995; Tamura 2004) would lead to more ancient estimates of divergence, and thus stronger evidence for selective maintenance.
Domain architecture and structural modeling of Ago2 paralogs in the obscura group
To infer the location of each domain in each paralog identified in D. subobscura, D. obscura, and D. pseudoobscura, we searched the Pfam database (Finn et al. 2009). To test for structural differences between the D. pseudoobscura paralogs, we built structural models of each paralog, based on the published X-ray crystallographic structure of human Ago2 (Schirle and Macrae 2012). We used the MODELER software in the Discovery Studio 4.0 Modeling Environment [Accelrys Software, San Diego (2013)] to calculate 10 models, selected the most energetically favorable for each protein, and assessed model quality with the 3D-profile option in the software. To assess variation in selective pressure across the structure of each paralog, we mapped variable residues onto each structure (Figure S7) using PyMol v.1.7.4.1 (Schrödinger).
Quantification of virus-induced expression of Ago2 paralogs
We exposed 48- to 96-hr posteclosion virgin males and females of D. melanogaster, D. subobscura, D. obscura, and D. pseudoobscura to Drosophila C virus (DCV), by puncturing the thorax with a pin contaminated with DCV at a dose of ∼4 × 107 tissue culture infective dose 50 (TCID50) per milliliter. Infection with DCV using this method has previously been shown to lead to a rapid and ultimately fatal increase in DCV titer in D. melanogaster and obscura group species (Longdon et al. 2015). All flies were incubated at 18C under a 12L:12D light cycle, with D. melanogaster on Lewis medium and D. subobscura, D. obscura, and D. pseudoobscura on banana medium. We sampled four to seven individuals per species at 0, 8, 16, 24, 48, and 72 hr postinfection. At each time point we extracted RNA using TRIzol reagent (Ambion) and a chloroform/isopropanol extraction, treated twice with TURBO DNase (Ambion), and reverse transcribed using M-MLV reverse transcriptase (Promega, Madison, WI) primed with random hexamers. We then quantified the expression of Ago2 paralogs in these samples by quantitative PCR (qPCR), using Fast Sybr Green (Applied Biosystems) and custom-designed paralog-specific qPCR primer pairs (see Table S5 for primer sequences). Due to their high level of sequence similarity (99.9% identity), no primer pair could distinguish between D. pseudoobscura Ago2a1 and Ago2a3, so combined expression of these two genes is presented as “Ago2a.” All qPCR reactions for each sample were run in duplicate and scaled to the internal reference gene Ribosomal Protein L32 (RpL32). To capture the widest possible biological variation, the three biological replicates for each species each used a different wild-type genetic background (see Table S3 for backgrounds used).
Quantification of Ago2 paralog expression in different tissues and life stages
For D. subobscura, D. obscura, and D. pseudoobscura, we extracted RNA from the head, testis/ovaries, and carcass of 48- to 96-hr posteclosion virgin adults, with males and females extracted separately. Each sample consisted of 8–15 individuals in D. subobscura, 10 individuals in D. obscura, and 15 individuals in D. pseudoobscura. We then used qPCR to quantify the expression of each Ago2 paralog in each tissue, with two technical replicates per sample (reagents, primers, and cycling conditions as above). We carried out five replicates per species, each using a different wild-type background (see Table S3 for details of backgrounds used). To provide an informal comparison with the expression pattern of Ago2 before duplication (an “ancestral” expression pattern), we used the bases per kilobase of gene model per million mapped bases (BPKM) values for Ago2 calculated from RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) data from the body (carcass and digestive system), head, ovary, and testis of 4-day-old D. melanogaster adults by Brown et al. 2014, scaling each BPKM value to the value for RpL32 in each tissue. Due to the design of that experiment, the body data are derived from pooled samples of males and females (Brown et al. 2014).
To quantify expression of Ago2 paralogs in D. pseudoobscura embryos, we collected eggs within 30 min of laying and used qPCR to measure the expression of each Ago2 paralog (reagents and primers as above) in two separate wild-type genetic backgrounds (MV8 and MV10). As above, we estimated an ancestral expression pattern of Ago2 before duplication from the BPKM values for Ago2 in 0- to 2-hr-old D. melanogaster embryos according to Brown et al. 2014, scaled to the BPKM value for RpL32 in embryos. To determine any changes in the expression of other D. pseudoobscura Argonautes (Ago1, Ago3, Aub, and Piwi) that are associated with Ago2 duplication, we measured their expression in adult tissues and embryos, as detailed above, and compared this with the expression of the Argonautes in D. melanogaster as measured by Brown et al. 2014.
Testing for evolutionary rate changes associated with tissue specificity of Ago2
We used codeml (PAML v4.4, Yang 1997) to fit variants of the M0 model (a single dN/dS ratio, ω) to the 65 drosophilid Ago2 homologs shown in Figure 1. All analyses of sequence evolution excluded the highly repetitive N-terminal glutamine-rich repeat regions, as these regions are effectively unalignable and are unlikely to conform to simple models of sequence evolution (Palmer and Obbard 2016). In contrast to the tree topology, which was based on first and second positions only, the alignment for the codeml analysis included all positions (File S2). To compare the evolutionary rates of ubiquitously expressed and testis-specific Ago2 paralogs, we fitted a model specifying one ω for the Ago2 paralogs that were shown to be testis-specific by qPCR (7 homologs), and another ω for the rest of the tree (58 homologs). We also fitted two models to account for rate variation between the obscura group Ago2 subclades. The first model specified a separate ω for the Ago2a subclade (17 homologs), the Ago2e subclade (8 homologs), the Ago2f subclade (5 homologs), and the rest of the tree (35 homologs). The second model additionally incorporated an extra ω specified for the D. pseudoobscura–D. persimilis Ago2a–Ago2b subclade (3 homologs, all of which are testis-specific, in contrast with the rest of the obscura group Ago2a subclade). We used Akaike weights to assess which model provided the best fit to the data, given the number of parameters. As mentioned above, the high CUB seen in some Ago2 paralogues may affect PAML analyses by decreasing synonymous site divergence (dS) in those lineages, thereby inflating the dN/dS ratio (ω). However, we find no link between levels of CUB and the value of ω, suggesting that CUB is not impacting our PAML analyses.
Sequencing of Ago2 paralog haplotypes from D. subobscura, D. obscura, and D. pseudoobscura
To obtain genotype data for the Ago2 paralogs in D. subobscura, D. obscura, and D. pseudoobscura, we sequenced the Ago2 paralogs from six males and six females of each species, each from a different wild-collected line (detailed in Table S3, sequence polymorphism data in File S4). We extracted genomic DNA from each individual using the DNeasy Blood and Tissue kit (QIAGEN, Valencia, CA) and amplified and Sanger sequenced each Ago2 paralog from each individual (reagents and PCR primers as above, sequencing primers detailed in Table S5). We trimmed and assembled Sanger sequence reads using Geneious v.5.6.2 (http://www.geneious.com, Kearse et al. 2012), and identified polymorphic sites by eye. After sequencing Ago2a (annotated as a single gene in the D. pseudoobscura genome), we discovered two very recent Ago2a paralogs (which we denote Ago2a1 and Ago2a3), which had been cross-amplified. For each D. pseudoobscura individual, we therefore resequenced Ago2a3 using one primer targeted to its neighboring locus GA22965, and used this sequence to resolve polymorphic sites in the Ago2a1/Ago2a3 composite sequence, thereby gaining both genotypes for each individual. For each Ago2 paralog, we inferred haplotypes from these sequence data using PHASE (Stephens et al. 2001), apart from the X-linked paralogs (Ago2a1, Ago2a3, and Ago2d) in D. pseudoobscura males, for which phase was obtained directly from the sequence data. The hemizygous haploid X-linked sequences were used in phase inference and should substantially improve the inferred phasing of female genotypes.
To quantify differences between paralogs in their population genetic characteristics, we aligned haplotypes using translational MAFFT (Katoh et al. 2002), and used DnaSP v.5.10.01 (Librado and Rozas 2009) to calculate the following summary statistics for each Ago2 paralogue: π (pairwise diversity, with Jukes–Cantor correction as described in Lynch and Crease 1990) at nonsynonymous (πa) and synonymous (πs) sites, Tajima’s D (Tajima 1989) and ENC (Wright 1990). To compare the ENC for each gene with the genome as a whole, we used codonW v1.4.2 (Peden 1995) to calculate the ENC for the longest ORF from each gene or transcript in the genomes or transcriptomes of D. subobscura, D. obscura, and D. pseudoobscura (ORF sets detailed below). In each species, we then compared the ENC values of each Ago2 paralog with this genome-wide ENC distribution.
Testing for positive selection on Ago2 paralogs in the obscura group
We used McDonald–Kreitman (MK) tests (McDonald and Kreitman 1991) to test for positive selection on each Ago2 paralog. For each paralog, we chose an outgroup with divergence at synonymous sites (KS) in the range 0.1–0.2 where possible. However, the prevalence of duplications and losses of Ago2 paralogs in the obscura group meant that for some tests no suitably divergent extant outgroup existed. In these cases, we reconstructed hypothetical ancestral sequences using the M0 model provided by codeml from PAML (Yang 1997). To assess the effect of these outgroup choices on our results, we repeated each test with another outgroup and found no effect of outgroup choice on the significance of any tests, and only marginal differences in estimates of α and ωα (results of tests using primary and alternative outgroups are detailed in Table S1 and Table S2).
A complementary approach to identifying positive selection is to test for reduced diversity at a locus compared with the genome as a whole. To compare the diversity of each D. pseudoobscura Ago2 paralog with the genome-wide distribution of synonymous site diversity, we used genomic data for 12 lines generated by McGaugh et al. 2012. We mapped short reads to the longest ORF for each gene in the R3.2 gene set using Bowtie2 v2.1.0 (Langmead et al. 2009) and estimated synonymous site diversity (θW based on fourfold synonymous sites) at each ORF using PoPoolation (Kofler et al. 2011). We then plotted the distribution of synonymous site diversity, limited to genes in the size range of 0.75–3 kb for comparability with the Ago2 paralogs, and compared the fourfold synonymous site diversity levels of each D. pseudoobscura Ago2 paralog with this distribution. Some D. pseudoobscura paralogs are located on autosomes (Ago2b, Ago2c, and Ago2e) and some on the X chromosome (Ago2a1, Ago2a3, and Ago2d). Therefore, because of the different population genetic expectations for autosomal and X-linked genes (Vicoso and Charlesworth 2006), we examined separate distributions for autosomal and X-linked genes. To provide an additional test for reduced diversity at D. pseudoobscura Ago2 paralogs, we performed maximum-likelihood Hudson–Kreitman–Aguadé (HKA) tests (Wright and Charlesworth 2004), using divergence from D. affinis and intraspecific polymorphism data for 84 D. pseudoobscura loci generated by Haddrill et al. (2010). We performed 63 tests to encompass all one-, two-, three-, four-, five-, and six-way combinations of the paralogs and calculated Akaike weights from the resulting likelihood estimates to provide an estimate of the level of support for each combination.
To infer a genome-wide distribution of synonymous site diversity for D. obscura and D. subobscura, for which genomic data are unavailable, we used pooled transcriptome data from wild-collected adult male flies that had previously been generated for surveys of RNA viruses (van Mierlo et al. 2014; Webster et al. 2016). To generate a de novo transcriptome for each species, we assembled short reads with Trinity r20140717 (Grabherr et al. 2011). For each species, we mapped short reads from the pooled sample to the longest ORF for each transcript, estimated synonymous site diversity at each locus using PoPoolation (Kofler et al. 2011), and plotted the distribution of diversity (as described above for D. pseudoobscura). The presence of heterozygous sites in males (identified by Sanger sequencing) confirmed that all Ago2 paralogs in D. subobscura and D. obscura are autosomal: we therefore compared the synonymous site diversity for these paralogs with the autosomal distribution and do not show the distributions for putatively X-linked genes. Our use of transcriptome data for D. obscura and D. subobscura will bias the resulting diversity distributions in three ways. First, variation in expression level will cause individuals displaying high levels of expression to be overrepresented among reads, downwardly biasing diversity. Second, highly expressed genes are easier to assemble, and highly expressed genes tend to display lower genetic diversity (Pal et al. 2001; Lemos et al. 2005). Third, high-diversity genes are harder to assemble, per se. However, as all three biases will tend to artifactually reduce diversity in the genome-wide data set relative to Ago2, this makes our finding that Ago2 paralogs display unusually low diversity conservative.
Identifying selective sweeps in Ago2 paralogs of D. pseudoobscura
To test whether the unusually low diversity seen in the D. pseudoobscura Ago2 paralogs is due to recent selection or generally reduced diversity in that region of the genome, we compared diversity at each paralog to diversity in their neighboring regions. We obtained sequence data for the 50 kb either side of each of these paralogs from the 11 whole genomes detailed in McGaugh et al. 2012 (SRA044960.1, SRA044955.2, and SRA044956.1). Note that the very high similarity of these Ago2 paralogues means that they cannot be accurately assembled from short read data, and are not present in the data from McGaugh et al. 2012. For each genome, we therefore replaced the poorly assembled region corresponding to the paralog with one of our own Sanger-sequenced haplotypes, making a set of 11 ∼102-kb sequences for each paralog. We aligned these sequences using PRANK (Löytynoja and Goldman 2005) with default settings and calculated Watterson’s θ at all sites in a sliding window across each alignment, with a window size of 5 kb and a step of 1 kb. For Ago2a1 and Ago2a3, which are located in tandem, we analyzed the same genomic region. Since our Ago2 haplotypes were sampled from a different North American population of D. pseudoobscura than those of McGaugh et al. 2012, an apparent reduction in local diversity might result from differences in diversity between the two populations. We therefore also repeated these analyses on a data set in which our Sanger sequenced haplotypes were removed, leaving missing data.
To test explicitly for selective sweeps at each region, we used Sweepfinder (Nielsen et al. 2005b) to calculate the likelihood and location of a sweep in or near each Ago2 paralog. We specified a grid size of 20,000, a folded frequency spectrum for all sites, and included invariant sites. To infer the significance of any observed peaks in the composite likelihood ratio, we used ms (Hudson 2002) to generate 1000 samples of 11 sequences under a neutral coalescent model. We generated separate samples for each region surrounding an Ago2 paralog, conditioning on the number of polymorphic sites observed in that region, the sequence length equal to the alignment length, and an effective population size of 106 (based on a previous estimate for D. melanogaster by Li and Stephan 2006). We specified the recombination rate at 5 cM/Mb, a conservative value based on previous estimates for D. pseudoobscura (McGaugh et al. 2012), which will lead to larger segregating linkage groups and therefore a more stringent significance threshold.
Data availability
All new sequences produced in this study have been submitted to GenBank as KX016642–KX016771.
Results
Ago2 has undergone numerous ancient and recent duplications in the obscura group
Ago2 duplications had previously been noted in D. pseudoobscura (Hain et al. 2010), but their age and distribution in other species was unknown. We used BLAST (Altschul et al. 1997) and PCR to identify 65 Ago2 homologs in 39 species sampled across the Drosophilidae, including 30 homologs in 9 obscura group species. Using PCR and Sanger sequencing, we verified that the paralogs in D. subobscura, D. obscura, and D. pseudoobscura are genuine distinct loci, and not artifacts of erroneous assembly. Additionally, we verified that all paralogs possess introns and so are most likely to be the product of segmental duplication rather than retrotransposition. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that segmental duplicates are generally retained at a higher rate than retrotransposed duplicates, despite the rate of retrotransposition being higher than segmental duplication (Hahn 2009).
To characterize the relationships between Ago2 homologs in the obscura group and the other Drosophilidae, and estimate the date of the duplication events that produced them, we carried out a strict clock Bayesian phylogenetic analysis (Figure 1). This showed that there are early diverging Ago2 clades in the obscura group: the Ago2e subclade that diverged from other Ago2 paralogs ∼21 MYA (±10 MY) and the Ago2a and Ago2f subclades that were produced by a gene duplication event ∼16 MYA (±7 MY). Subsequently there have been a series of more recent duplications in the D. pseudoobscura subgroup Ago2a–d lineage. Using published genomes, transcriptomes, and PCR, we were unable to identify Ago2e in D. subobscura, Ago2e or Ago2f in D. lowei, or Ago2f in D. pseudoobscura, D. persimilis, and D. azteca. While apparent losses may reflect a lack of genomic data (D. subobscura, D. lowei, and D. azteca), incomplete genome assemblies (D. pseudoobscura and D. persimilis), or unexpressed genes in transcriptome surveys, we attempted to validate the losses observable in D. pseudoobscura and D. subobscura by extensive PCR and were again unable to recover these genes from those two species.
In release 3.03 of the D. pseudoobscura genome, the paralogs Ago2b–Ago2e have confirmed locations, but Ago2a1 and Ago2a3 (the very recent paralogs newly identified here) lie in tandem on an unplaced contig with a third incomplete copy (Ago2a2) between them. We used PCR to confirm the existence, orientation, and relative positioning of these genes and to identify the location of this contig, which lies in reverse orientation on chromosome XL-group1a (predicted coordinates 3,463,701–3,489,689). We then combined this information with our phylogenetic analysis to reconstruct the positional evolution of D. pseudoobscura Ago2 paralogs (Figure S1). We found that D. pseudoobscura Ago2d is syntenic with D. melanogaster Ago2, indicating that Ago2d is the ancestral paralog in this species. We also found that Ago2 paralogs have translocated throughout the D. pseudoobscura genome (Figure S1) and are situated on autosomes (Ago2b, Ago2c, and Ago2e) and both arms of the X chromosome (Ago2a1, Ago2a3, and Ago2d). It should be noted that a lack of genomic data precludes similar synteny analysis for any other obscura group species; our naming of the Ago2 paralogs in these species as Ago2a (or Ago2a and Ago2b in the case of D. affinis and D. azteca) reflects their position within the Ago2a subclade, rather than a syntenic relationship or otherwise with D. pseudoobscura Ago2a1 and Ago2a3.
Ago2 paralogs in D. subobscura, D. obscura, and D. pseudoobscura are probably functional
Our phylogenetic analysis (Figure 1) revealed that the Ago2 paralogs in the obscura group have retained coding sequences for millions of generations, showing that they have remained functional for this period. They have also retained PAZ and PIWI domains and a bilobal structure (characteristic of Argonaute proteins), suggesting that they are part of a functional RNAi pathway. In D. melanogaster Ago2 plays a key role in antiviral immunity, but is ubiquitously and highly expressed in both males and females and is not strongly induced by viral challenge (Figure 2a, Aliyari et al. 2008). To test whether this expression pattern has been conserved after Ago2 duplication, or whether any Ago2 paralogs have become inducible by viral challenge, we measured the expression of each Ago2 paralog in female and male D. subobscura, D. obscura, and D. pseudoobscura after infection with DCV. These species are separated by ∼10 MY of evolution and represent the three major clades within the obscura group. Members of the obscura group are highly susceptible to DCV, supporting high viral titres and displaying rapid mortality (Longdon et al. 2015). We found that only one paralog is expressed in both sexes at a high level in D. subobscura (Ago2a), D. obscura (Ago2a), and D. pseudoobscura (Ago2c). These paralogs show a similar pattern of expression to D. melanogaster Ago2, being expressed constitutively throughout the time course rather than induced by viral infection (Figure 2). Unexpectedly, and with only one exception, the other Ago2 paralogs in all species were expressed exclusively in males (Figure 2, b–d), raising the possibility that these duplicates have specialized to a sex-specific role. The one exception was D. pseudoobscura Ago2d, which is the ancestral paralog in this species (inferred by synteny), and for which we could not detect any expression.
Ago2 paralogs have repeatedly specialized to the testis
To determine whether the strongly male-biased expression pattern is associated with a testis-specific role, we quantified the tissue-specific expression patterns of Ago2 paralogs in D. subobscura, D. obscura, and D. pseudoobscura. In D. melanogaster, the single copy of Ago2 was expressed in all adult tissues (Figure 3D), and transcripts were present in the embryo (Figure S2). In D. subobscura, D. obscura, and D. pseudoobscura, we found that the Ago2 paralogs exhibited striking differences in their tissue-specific patterns of expression (Figure 3, A–C). In each species, one paralog has retained the ancestral ubiquitous expression pattern in adult tissues. In contrast, every other paralog was expressed only in the testis, except for the nonexpressed D. pseudoobscura Ago2d. None of the testis-specific paralogs in D. pseudoobscura was detectable in embryos (Figure S2).
Interestingly, the ubiquitously expressed paralog in D. subobscura and D. obscura is the ancestral gene (Ago2a in both cases, as inferred by synteny with D. melanogaster), but in D. pseudoobscura another paralog (Ago2c) has evolved the ubiquitous expression pattern, and the ancestral gene (Ago2d) was not expressed at a detectable level in any tissue. When interpreted in the context of the phylogenetic relationships between these paralogs, the most parsimonious explanation is that testis specificity evolved at least three times: first at the base of the Ago2e clade, second at the base of the Ago2f clade, and third at the base of the D. pseudoobscura–D. persimilis Ago2a–Ago2b subclade (Figure 1).
Testis specificity is associated with faster protein evolution
To test for differences in evolutionary rate between testis-specific and ubiquitously expressed Ago2 paralogs, we fitted sequence evolution models to the set of drosophilid Ago2 sequences depicted in Figure 1 using codeml (PAML, Yang 1997). These tests estimate separate dN/dS ratios (ω) for different subclades in the gene tree, providing a test for differential rates of protein evolution. We found that most support (Akaike weight = 0.99) falls behind a model specifying a different ω for each obscura group Ago2 subclade, and another separate ω for the D. pseudoobscura–D. persimilis Ago2a–Ago2b subclade. Under this model, the testis-specific D. pseudoobscura–D. persimilis Ago2a–Ago2b subclade has the highest rate of protein evolution (ω = 0.32 ± 0.047 SE), followed by the testis-specific Ago2f subclade (ω = 0.21 ± 0.014), the ubiquitous Ago2a subclade (ω = 0.19 ± 0.012), the testis-specific Ago2e subclade (ω = 0.16 ± 0.010), and finally the other Drosophilid Ago2 sequences (ω = 0.12 ± 0.002). This shows that the evolution of testis specificity was accompanied by an increase in the rate of protein evolution following two of the three duplications. We also used the Bayes empirical Bayes sites test in codeml to identify codons evolving under positive selection across the entire gene tree, and the branch-sites test to identify codons under positive selection in the obscura group Ago2 subclade. While we found no positively selected codons with the sites test, we identified three codons under positive selection (297, 338, and 360) in the obscura group Ago2 subclade with the branch-sites test (likelihood ratio test M8 vs. M8a, P < 0.005).
MK tests identify strong positive selection on D. pseudoobscura Ago2e
Changes in evolutionary rate after the evolution of testis specificity may occur as a result of changes in positive selection or changes in selective constraint. However, unless there are multiple substitutions within single codons, this will be hard to detect using methods such as codeml. Therefore, as a second test for positive selection on Ago2 paralogs in D. subobscura, D. obscura, and D. pseudoobscura, we gathered intraspecies polymorphism data for each Ago2 paralog in these species (File S4) and performed MK tests (Table S1). The MK test uses a comparison of the numbers of fixed differences between species at nonsynonymous (Dn) and synonymous (Ds) sites, and polymorphisms within a species at nonsynonymous (Pn) and synonymous (Ps) sites to infer the action of positive selection. If all mutations are either neutral or strongly deleterious, the Dn/Ds ratio should be approximately equal to the Pn/Ps ratio; however, if there is positive selection, an excess of nonsynonymous differences is expected (McDonald and Kreitman 1991). The majority of MK tests were nonsignificant (Fisher’s exact test, P > 0.1), despite often displaying relatively high KA/KS ratios e.g., D. pseudoobscura Ago2a1 (KA/KS = 0.34), Ago2b (KA/KS = 0.43), and Ago2d (KA/KS = 0.36). However, the low diversity at these loci (<10 polymorphic sites in most cases; see below) means that the MK approach has little power, and that estimates of the proportion of substitutions that are adaptive (α) are likely to be poor. In contrast to the other loci, our MK analysis identified strong positive selection acting on D. pseudoobscura Ago2e—which has relatively high genetic diversity—with α at 100% (α = 1.00; Fisher’s exact test, P = 0.0004). This result is driven by the extreme dearth of nonsynonymous-to-synonymous polymorphisms (0 Pn to 17 Ps), despite substantial numbers of fixed differences (77 Dn to 120 Ds), and its statistical significance is robust to the choice of outgroup (Table S2).
The majority of Ago2 paralogs have extremely low levels of sequence diversity
When strong selection acts to reduce genetic diversity at a locus, it can also reduce diversity at linked loci before recombination can break up linkage (Maynard Smith and Haigh 1974). Recent positive selection can therefore be inferred from a reduction in synonymous site diversity compared with other genes. Because MK tests can detect only multiple long-term substitutions, and are hampered by low diversity, diversity-based approaches offer a complementary way to detect very recent strong selection. We therefore compared the synonymous site diversity at each Ago2 paralog in D. pseudoobscura with the distribution of genome-wide synonymous site diversity. We found that all D. pseudoobscura paralogs have unusually low diversity, relative to other loci: Ago2a1, Ago2b, and Ago2c fall into the lowest percentile, Ago2a3 and Ago2d into the second lowest percentile, and Ago2e into the eighth lowest percentile (Figure S4). A multilocus extension of the HKA test (ML-HKA, Wright and Charlesworth 2004) confirmed that the diversity of Ago2a1–Ago2e is significantly lower than the D. pseudoobscura genome as a whole (Akaike weight = 0.98).
Unfortunately, population-genomic data are not available for D. subobscura and D. obscura, preventing a similar analysis. However, we found similar results for Ago2a and Ago2e when comparing the diversity of D. subobscura and D. obscura Ago2 paralogs to levels of diversity inferred from transcriptome data (data from Webster et al. 2016), suggesting that this effect is not limited to D. pseudoobscura, and these genes may therefore have been recent targets of selection in multiple species. In D. obscura, Ago2a and Ago2e fall into the 2nd and 4th lowest diversity percentile, respectively, whereas Ago2f falls into the 19th percentile (Figure S4). In D. subobscura, Ago2a falls into the 7th percentile, whereas Ago2f falls into the 16th percentile (Figure S4). The prevalence of low intraspecific diversity for testis-specific paralogs is consistent with recent selective sweeps, suggesting that positive selection, not merely relaxation of constraint, has contributed to the increased evolutionary rate seen after specialization to the testis.
Four of six D. pseudoobscura Ago2 duplicates show a strong signature of recent hard selective sweeps
The impact of selection on linked diversity (a selective sweep) is expected to leave a characteristic footprint in local genetic diversity around the site of selection, and this forms the basis of explicit model-based approaches to detect the recent action of positive selection (Nielsen et al. 2005a). For D. pseudoobscura, population genomic data for 11 haplotypes is available from McGaugh et al. (2012), permitting an explicit model-based test for recent hard selective sweeps near to Ago2 paralogs. We therefore combined our Ago2 data with 111-kb-long haplotypes from McGaugh et al. (2012) to analyze the neighboring region around each paralog. Ago2a1 and Ago2a3 form a tandem repeat and were therefore analyzed together as a single potential sweep. We found strong evidence for recent selective sweeps at or very close to Ago2a1/3, Ago2b, and Ago2c, which display sharp troughs in their diversity levels and large peaks in the composite likelihood of a sweep, which far exceed a significance threshold derived from coalescent simulation (P < 0.01; Figure 4). These localized reductions in diversity remain when our own Ago2 haplotype data are removed, showing the results are robust to the fact that our Ago2 sequence data are derived from a different population to the genome-wide data of McGaugh et al. (2012) [Figure S6; note that sequence data for Ago2 paralogs cannot be derived from the data of McGaugh et al. (2012), because of their extreme similarity]. In addition, there is ambiguous evidence for a sweep at Ago2d, in the form of one significant (P < 0.01) likelihood peak just upstream of the paralog, but two other peaks ∼1 kb and ∼3 kb further upstream. There is no evidence for a hard sweep at Ago2e, which has no diversity trough or likelihood peak.
Discussion
Testis specificity may indicate a loss of antiviral function
We have found that Ago2 paralogs in the obscura group have repeatedly evolved divergent expression patterns after duplication, with the majority of paralogs specializing to the testis. This is the first report of testis specificity for any arthropod Ago2, which is ubiquitously expressed in D. melanogaster (Celniker et al. 2009), and provides a strong indication that these paralogs have diverged in function. This testis specificity (Figure 3) suggests that these Argonautes are likely to have lost their ancestral ubiquitous antiviral role. Additionally, the constant level of expression of testis-specific paralogs under DCV infection (Figure 2) suggests that they have not evolved an inducible response to viral infection, either restricted to the testis or in other tissues. In contrast, one paralog in each species has retained the ubiquitous expression pattern seen in D. melanogaster (D. subobscura Ago2a, D. obscura Ago2a, and D. pseudoobscura Ago2c; Figure 3), suggesting that these paralogs have retained roles in antiviral defense (Li et al. 2002; van Rij et al. 2006), dosage compensation (Menon and Meller 2012), and/or somatic TE suppression (Chung et al. 2008; Czech et al. 2008).
Both ubiquitous and testis-specific Ago2 paralogs show evidence of recent positive selection
We identified selective sweeps at the ubiquitously expressed Ago2 paralog in D. pseudoobscura Ago2c, and very low diversity in the ubiquitously expressed Ago2 paralogs of D. subobscura and D. obscura (Ago2a), suggesting that all of these genes may have recently experienced strong positive selection. Four randomly chosen genes that are testis-specific in D. melanogaster (Mikhaylova et al. 2008) do not fall into the low-diversity tails of the genome-wide diversity distributions of D. obscura [β-tubulin (85D), Hsp60C, sungrazer and roughex] and D. subobscura [β-tubulin (85D), Hsp60C, sungrazer, and Calcutta cup], suggesting that the low diversity of testis-specific Ago2 paralogs in these species is not a general consequence of testis-specific expression. This is consistent with previous findings of strong selection and rapid evolution of Ago2 in D. melanogaster (Obbard et al. 2006, 2009b, 2011), which has also experienced recent sweeps in D. melanogaster, D. simulans, and D. yakuba (Obbard et al. 2011), and across Drosophila more broadly (Kolaczkowski et al. 2011). It has previously been suggested that this is driven by arms-race coevolution with viruses (Obbard et al. 2009a; Kolaczkowski et al. 2011), some of which encode viral suppressors of RNAi (VSRs) that block Ago2 function (Bronkhorst and van Rij 2014). The presence of VSR-encoding viruses, such as Nora virus, in natural obscura group populations (Webster et al. 2016), combined with the host specificity that can be displayed by VSRs (van Mierlo et al. 2014), suggest that arms-race dynamics may also be driving the rapid evolution of ubiquitously expressed Ago2 paralogs in the obscura group.
Potential testis-specific functions
In contrast to their ancestral ubiquitous expression pattern, the dominant fate for Ago2 paralogs in the obscura group appears to have been specialization to the testis. Paralogs often undergo a brief period of testis specificity soon after duplication (Assis and Bachtrog 2013, 2015), and this has given rise to the “out-of-the-testis” hypothesis, in which new paralogs are initially testis-specific before evolving functions in other tissues (Kaessmann 2010). However, two lines of evidence suggest an adaptive basis for the testis specificity observed for the obscura group Ago2 paralogs. First, testis specificity has been retained for >10 MY in Ago2e and Ago2f, in contrast to the broadening of expression over time expected under the out-of-the-testis hypothesis (Kaessmann 2010; Assis and Bachtrog 2013). Second, all testis-specific Ago2 paralogs in D. pseudoobscura show evidence either of long-term positive selection (MK test for the high-diversity Ago2e) or of recent selective sweeps (in low-diversity Ago2a1/3 and Ago2b), and the testis-specific D. obscura Ago2e displays a reduction in diversity, potentially driven by selection.
Under a subfunctionalization model for Ago2 testis specialization, five candidate selective pressures seem likely: testis-specific dosage compensation, antiviral defense, gene regulation, TE suppression, and/or the suppression of meiotic drive. Of these, testis-specific dosage compensation seems the least likely to drive testis specificity because the MSL complex, which Ago2 directs to X-linked genes to carry out dosage compensation in the soma of D. melanogaster, is absent from testis (Conrad and Akhtar 2012). Testis-specific antiviral defense seems similarly unlikely, as the only known paternally transmitted Drosophila viruses (Sigmaviruses; Rhabdoviridae) pass through both the male and female gametes (Longdon and Jiggins 2012), and so the potential benefits of testis specificity seem unclear. Alternatively, testis-specific Ago2 duplicates could be coevolving with other testis-specific genes through the hairpin RNA pathway, in which siRNAs generated from endogenous hairpin-forming RNAs (hpRNAs) bind Ago2 and regulate the expression of host genes (Okamura et al. 2008). In D. melanogaster, hpRNA-derived siRNAs target testis-specific genes involved in male fertility and coevolve with these targets to maintain base complementarity (Wen et al. 2015). If a similar pathway operates in the obscura group, Ago2 paralogs could have specialized to the hpRNA pathway in order to regulate testis-specific genes more effectively.
Finally, the suppression of TEs or meiotic drive seem promising candidate selective forces. First, numerous TEs transpose preferentially in the testis, such as Penelope in D. virilis (Rozhkov et al. 2010) and copia in D. melanogaster (Pasyukova et al. 1997; Morozova et al. 2009), which could impose a selection pressure on Ago2 paralogs to provide a testis-specific TE suppression mechanism. It should be noted that all members of the canonical anti-TE Piwi subfamily (Ago3, Aub, and Piwi) are also expressed in obscura group testis (Figure S3), suggesting that if Ago2 paralogs have specialized to suppress TEs, they are doing so alongside the existing TE suppression mechanism. Second, testis specificity could have evolved to suppress meiotic drive, which is prevalent (in the form of sex-ratio distortion) in the obscura group (Gershenson 1928; Sturtevant and Dobzhansky 1936; Wu and Beckenbach 1983; Jaenike 2001; Unckless et al. 2015), and which is suppressed by RNAi-based mechanisms in other species (Tao et al. 2007; Kotelnikov et al. 2009; Gell and Reenan 2013). A high level of meiotic drive in the obscura group could therefore impose selection for the evolution of novel suppression mechanisms, leading to the repeated specialization of Ago2 paralogs to the testis.
Prospects for novel functions during the evolution of RNAi
The functional specialization that we observe for obscura group Ago2 paralogs raises the prospect of undiscovered derived functions following Argonaute expansions in other lineages. Ago2 has duplicated frequently across the arthropods, with expansions present in insects (D. willistoni (Figure 1) and Musca domestica, Scott et al. 2014), crustaceans (Penaeus monodon, Leebonoi et al. 2015), and chelicerates (Tetranychus urticae, Ixodes scapularis, Mesobuthus martensii, and Parasteatoda tepidariorum, Palmer and Jiggins 2015). The prevalence of testis specificity in obscura group Ago2 paralogs raises the possibility that specialization to the germline may be more widespread following Argonaute duplication. The expression of Ago2 paralogs has previously been characterized in P. monodon and shows that one paralog has indeed specialized to the germline of both males and females, but not the testis alone (Leebonoi et al. 2015). Publicly available RNA-seq data from the head, gonad, and carcass of male and female M. domestica (GSE67065, Meisel et al. 2015) suggest that neither M. domestica Ago2 paralog has specialized to the testis (Figure S8). However, public data from the head, thorax, and abdomen of male and female D. willistoni (GSE31723, Meisel et al. 2012) show that one D. willistoni Ago2 paralog (FBgn0212615) is expressed ubiquitously, while the other (FBgn0226485) is expressed only in the male abdomen (Figure S8), consistent with the evolution of testis specificity after duplication. This raises the possibility that a testis-specific selection pressure may be driving the retention and specialization of Ago2 paralogs across the arthropods.
In conclusion, we have identified rapid and repeated evolution of testis specificity after the duplication of Ago2 in the obscura group, associated with low genetic diversity and signatures of strong selection. Ago2 and other RNAi genes have undergone frequent expansions in different eukaryotic lineages (Mukherjee et al. 2013; Lewis et al. 2016) and have been shown to switch between ubiquitous and germline- or ovary-specific functions in isolated species. This study provides evidence for the evolution of a new testis-specific RNAi function and suggests that positive selection may act on young paralogs to drive the rapid evolution of novel RNAi mechanisms across the eukaryotes.
Acknowledgments
We thank Ben Longdon and Brian Charlesworth for providing us with strains of D. obscura and D. pseudoobscura, respectively, and Francis Jiggins for providing us with DCV. This work was supported by a Natural Environment Research Council doctoral training grant (NERC DG NE/J500021/1 to S.H.L.), the Academy of Finland (265971 to H.S.), a University of Edinburgh chancellor’s fellowship, a Wellcome Trust research career development fellowship (WT085064 to D.J.O.), and a Wellcome Trust strategic award to the Centre for Immunity, Infection and Evolution (WT095831).
Footnotes
Communicating editor: D. A. Barbash
Supplemental material is available online at www.genetics.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1534/genetics.116.192336/-/DC1.
Literature Cited
Palmer W. H., and D. J. Obbard, 2016 Variation and evolution of the glutamine-rich repeat region of Drosophila Argonaute-2. G3 (Bethesda) 6: 2563–2572.
Russo, C. A., N. Takezaki, and M. Nei,
Author notes
Present address: Life Sciences, University of Sussex, BN1 9QG Sussex, United Kingdom.