Reciprocal genomic evolution in the ant-fungus agricultural symbiosis.
Nat Commun, 2016/07/20;7:12233.
Nygaard S[1], Hu H[2], Li C[2], Schiøtt M[1], Chen Z[2], Yang Z[2], Xie Q[2], Ma C[2], Deng Y[2], Dikow RB[3], Rabeling C[4, 5], Nash DR[1], Wcislo WT[6], Brady SG[5], Schultz TR[5], Zhang G[1, 2, 7], Boomsma JJ[1]
Affiliations
PMID: 27436133DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12233
Impact factor: 17.694
Abstract
The attine ant-fungus agricultural symbiosis evolved over tens of millions of years, producing complex societies with industrial-scale farming analogous to that of humans. Here we document reciprocal shifts in the genomes and transcriptomes of seven fungus-farming ant species and their fungal cultivars. We show that ant subsistence farming probably originated in the early Tertiary (55-60 MYA), followed by further transitions to the farming of fully domesticated cultivars and leaf-cutting, both arising earlier than previously estimated. Evolutionary modifications in the ants include unprecedented rates of genome-wide structural rearrangement, early loss of arginine biosynthesis and positive selection on chitinase pathways. Modifications of fungal cultivars include loss of a key ligninase domain, changes in chitin synthesis and a reduction in carbohydrate-degrading enzymes as the ants gradually transitioned to functional herbivory. In contrast to human farming, increasing dependence on a single cultivar lineage appears to have been essential to the origin of industrial-scale ant agriculture.
MeSH terms
Agriculture; Animals; Ants; Calibration; Carbohydrate Metabolism; Chitin; Crops, Agricultural; Domestication; Evolution, Molecular; Fungi; Genome; Genome, Insect; Genome, Plant; Phylogeny; Sequence Analysis, DNA; Symbiosis; Time Factors
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