The Population Genomics of Sunflowers and Genomic Determinants of Protein Evolution Revealed by RNAseq
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Few studies have investigated the causes of evolutionary rate variation among plant nuclear genes, especially in recently diverged species still capable of hybridizing in the wild. The recent advent of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) permits investigation of genome wide rates of protein evolution and the role of selection in generating and maintaining divergence. Here, we use individual whole-transcriptome sequencing (RNAseq) to refine our understanding of the population genomics of wild species of sunflowers (Helianthus spp.) and the factors that affect rates of protein evolution. We aligned 35 GB of transcriptome sequencing data and identified 433,257 polymorphic sites (SNPs) in a reference transcriptome comprising 16,312 genes. Using SNP markers, we identified strong population clustering largely corresponding to the three species analyzed here (Helianthus annuus, H. petiolaris, H. debilis), with one distinct early generation hybrid. Then, we calculated the proportions of adaptive substitution fixed by selection (alpha) and identified gene ontology categories with elevated values of alpha. The "response to biotic stimulus" category had the highest mean alpha across the three interspecific comparisons, implying that natural selection imposed by other organisms plays an important role in driving protein evolution in wild sunflowers. Finally, we examined the relationship between protein evolution (dN/dS ratio) and several genomic factors predicted to co-vary with protein evolution (gene expression level, divergence and specificity, genetic divergence [FST], and nucleotide diversity pi). We find that variation in rates of protein divergence was correlated with gene expression level and specificity, consistent with results from a broad range of taxa and timescales. This would in turn imply that these factors govern protein evolution both at a microevolutionary and macroevolutionary timescale. Our results contribute to a general understanding of the determinants of rates of protein evolution and the impact of selection on patterns of polymorphism and divergence.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it