Although more than thirty mammalian genomes have been sequenced to draft quality, very few of these include the Y chromosome. This has limited our understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of gene persistence and loss, our ability to identify conserved regulatory elements, as well our knowledge of the extent to which different types of selection act to maintain genes within this unique genomic environment. Here, we present the first MSY (male-specific region of the Y chromosome) sequences from two carnivores, the domestic dog and cat. By combining these with other available MSY data, our multiordinal comparison allows for the first accounting of levels of selection constraining the evolution of eutherian Y chromosomes. Despite gene gain and loss across the phylogeny, we show the eutherian ancestor retained a core set of 17 MSY genes, most being constrained by negative selection for nearly 100 million years. The X-degenerate and ampliconic gene classes are partitioned into distinct chromosomal domains in most mammals, but were radically restructured on the human lineage. We identified multiple conserved noncoding elements that potentially regulate eutherian MSY genes. The acquisition of novel ampliconic gene families was accompanied by signatures of positive selection and has differentially impacted the degeneration and expansion of MSY gene repertoires in different species.[Supplemental material is available for this article.]Y chromosomes have arisen independently in divergent evolutionary lineages across the eukaryotic tree of life

The ability to uncover the phylogenetic history of recently extinct species and other species known only from archived museum material has rapidly improved due to the reduced cost and increased sequence capacity of next-generation sequencing technologies. One limitation of these approaches is the difficulty of isolating and sequencing large, orthologous DNA regions across multiple divergent species, which is exacerbated for museum specimens, where DNA quality varies greatly between samples and contamination levels are often high. Here we describe the use of cross-species DNA capture hybridization techniques and next-generation sequencing to selectively isolate and sequence partial to full-length mitochondrial DNA genomes from the degraded DNA of museum specimens, using probes generated from the DNA of a single extant species. We demonstrate our approach on specimens from an enigmatic gliding mammal, the Sunda colugo, which is widely distributed throughout Southeast Asia. We isolated DNA from 13 colugo specimens collected 47-170 years ago, and successfully captured and sequenced mitochondrial DNA from every specimen, frequently recovering fragments with 10%-13% sequence divergence from the capture probe sequence. Phylogenetic results reveal deep genetic divergence among colugos, both within and between the islands of Borneo and Java, as well as between the Malay Peninsula and different Sundaic islands. Our method is based on noninvasive sampling of minute amounts of soft tissue material from museum specimens, leaving the original specimen essentially undamaged. This approach represents a paradigm shift away from standard PCR-based approaches for accessing population genetic and phylogenomic information from poorly known and difficult-to-study species.

The colugo genome reveals hidden biodiversity and the sister group to primates.

Zoonomia is the largest comparative genomics resource for mammals produced to date. By aligning genomes for 240 species, we identify bases that, when mutated, are likely to affect fitness and alter disease risk. At least 332 million bases (~10.7%) in the human genome are unusually conserved across species (evolutionarily constrained) relative to neutrally evolving repeats, and 4552 ultraconserved elements are nearly perfectly conserved. Of 101 million significantly constrained single bases, 80% are outside protein-coding exons and half have no functional annotations in the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) resource. Changes in genes and regulatory elements are associated with exceptional mammalian traits, such as hibernation, that could inform therapeutic development. Earth’s vast and imperiled biodiversity offers distinctive power for identifying genetic variants that affect genome function and organismal phenotypes.

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