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Genome duplication is a recurring theme in vertebrate evolution and for instance, the human genome still contains numerous gene families that arose from the two rounds of genome duplication at the origin of vertebrates. Teleost fish are in that regards very interesting models due to an additional whole genome duplication (WGD) event that occurred at the base of their radiation, resulting in duplicated copies of many single-copy human genes. These ‘extra’ genes are, in principle, available for the evolution of new functions that could drive the origin of novelties and thus contribute to the diversification of life on Earth. Gene evolution after genome duplication is thus a crucial question to understand the mechanisms by which genomes evolved and drive the development and physiology of vertebrates. Unfortunately, we still do not yet have a sufficient understanding of vertebrate genomes to fully answer this question. The present project will make use of the additional WGDs of teleosts to address this question. By using next generation sequencing this project will first provide novel and genome-wide information on the transcript repertoires of different fish species chosen at key taxonomic positions with regards to teleost fish evolution. This evolutionary-relevant sequence dataset will then be used as a basis for the development of a high throughput analysis combining gene phylogenies, conserved syntenies and expression profiling. Results of this project should provide genome-wide answers on how often different gene copies are lost independently in different fish lineages and whether lineage-specific changes in duplicate gene content or in expression patterns of duplicated genes is important for the evolution of the remarkable diversity among teleosts. In addition and because these gene duplications also have a major impact on the quality of gene annotation in teleosts, this project will propose, supported by the results of our evolutionary-based analysis, the refinement of teleost gene nomenclature. This will link gene information across many vertebrate species, allowing to bridge functional information from model species to economically-relevant species.

Partners :

• Inra LPGP, Rennes (Coordinators Bobe Julien and Guiguen Yann - Sex Differentiation and Oogenesis)
• Université de l'Oregon, USA (J. Postlethwait)
• MGX, Montpellier (L Journot)
• Inra, Toulouse (C Klopp)
• Université Marseille (P Pontarotti)