TY - JOUR
T1 - Ancient diversity in host-parasite interaction genes in a model parasitic nematode
AU - Stevens, Lewis
AU - Martinez-Ugalde, Isaac
AU - King, Erna
AU - Wagah, Martin
AU - Absolon, Dominic
AU - Bancroft, Rowan
AU - Gonzalez De La Rosa, Pablo
AU - Hall, Jessica L
AU - Kieninger, Manuela
AU - Kloch, Agnieszka
AU - Pelan, Sarah
AU - Robertson, Elaine
AU - Pedersen, Amy B
AU - Abreu-Goodger, Cei
AU - Buck, Amy H
AU - Blaxter, Mark
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded in part by the Wellcome Trust Grants 206194 and 218328 awards to the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Leverhulme grant RPG-2019-404 awarded to A.H.B. For the purpose of Open Access, the authors have applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission. We are grateful to the Sanger Scientific Operations Long Read Team and the Genome Reference Informatics Team (GRIT) for their assistance with sequencing and curation and to Tree of Life colleagues for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this manuscript. We thank Daniel Fusca and Asher Cutter for their advice on calculating synonymous site diversity.
Funding Information:
This research was funded in part by the Wellcome Trust Grants 206194 and 218328 awards to the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Leverhulme grant RPG-2019-404 awarded to A.H.B. For the purpose of Open Access, the authors have applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission. We are grateful to the Sanger Scientific Operations Long Read Team and the Genome Reference Informatics Team (GRIT) for their assistance with sequencing and curation and to Tree of Life colleagues for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this manuscript. We thank Daniel Fusca and Asher Cutter for their advice on calculating synonymous site diversity.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).
PY - 2023/11/27
Y1 - 2023/11/27
N2 - Host-parasite interactions exert strong selection pressures on the genomes of both host and parasite. These interactions can lead to negative frequency-dependent selection, a form of balancing selection that is hypothesised to explain the high levels of polymorphism seen in many host immune and parasite antigen loci. Here, we sequence the genomes of several individuals of Heligmosomoides bakeri, a model parasite of house mice, and Heligmosomoides polygyrus, a closely related parasite of wood mice. Although H. bakeri is commonly referred to as H. polygyrus in the literature, their genomes show levels of divergence that are consistent with at least a million years of independent evolution. The genomes of both species contain hyper-divergent haplotypes that are enriched for proteins that interact with the host immune response. Many of these haplotypes originated prior to the divergence between H. bakeri and H. polygyrus, suggesting that they have been maintained by long-term balancing selection. Together, our results suggest that the selection pressures exerted by the host immune response have played a key role in shaping patterns of genetic diversity in the genomes of parasitic nematodes.
AB - Host-parasite interactions exert strong selection pressures on the genomes of both host and parasite. These interactions can lead to negative frequency-dependent selection, a form of balancing selection that is hypothesised to explain the high levels of polymorphism seen in many host immune and parasite antigen loci. Here, we sequence the genomes of several individuals of Heligmosomoides bakeri, a model parasite of house mice, and Heligmosomoides polygyrus, a closely related parasite of wood mice. Although H. bakeri is commonly referred to as H. polygyrus in the literature, their genomes show levels of divergence that are consistent with at least a million years of independent evolution. The genomes of both species contain hyper-divergent haplotypes that are enriched for proteins that interact with the host immune response. Many of these haplotypes originated prior to the divergence between H. bakeri and H. polygyrus, suggesting that they have been maintained by long-term balancing selection. Together, our results suggest that the selection pressures exerted by the host immune response have played a key role in shaping patterns of genetic diversity in the genomes of parasitic nematodes.
U2 - 10.1038/s41467-023-43556-w
DO - 10.1038/s41467-023-43556-w
M3 - Article
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 14
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
M1 - 7776
ER -