Long-lived rodents reveal signatures of positive selection in genes associated with lifespan and eusociality

Abstract

20The genetic mechanisms that determine lifespan are poorly understood. Most research has been 21 done on short lived animals and it is unclear if these insights can be transferred to long-lived 22 mammals like humans. Some African mole-rats (Bathyergidae) have life expectancies that are 23 multiple times higher than similar sized and phylogenetically closely related rodents. We obtained 24 genomic and transcriptomic data from 17 rodent species and systematically scanned eleven lineages 25 associated with the evolution of longevity and eusociality for positively selected genes (PSGs). The 26 set of 319 PSGs contains regulators of mTOR and is enriched in functional terms associated with (i) 27 processes that are regulated by the mTOR pathway, e.g. translation, autophagy and mitochondrial 28 biogenesis, (ii) the immune system and (iii) antioxidant defense. Analyzing gene expression of PSGs 29 during aging in the long-lived naked mole-rat and up-regulation in the short-lived rat, we found a 30 pattern fitting the antagonistic pleiotropy theory of aging. 31

Host–Symbiont Interactions in Deep-Sea Chemosymbiotic Vesicomyid Clams: Insights From Transcriptome Sequencing

“…The clade containing P. okutanii and A. marissinica was designated as the targeted lineage in the analysis using PosiGene (Sahm et al, 2017a). It has been reported that errors in the analysis are mainly caused by misalignment, which cannot be reduced by multiple test corrections (Sahm et al, 2017b). Therefore, the default pairwise similarity threshold of PosiGene (Sahm et al, 2017a) was applied to remove alignment errors, such as orthologs that were pseudo or poorly aligned, and nominal P-values were directly used to identify positively selected genes (Fletcher and Yang, 2010;Sahm et al, 2017b).…”

“…It has been reported that errors in the analysis are mainly caused by misalignment, which cannot be reduced by multiple test corrections (Sahm et al, 2017b). Therefore, the default pairwise similarity threshold of PosiGene (Sahm et al, 2017a) was applied to remove alignment errors, such as orthologs that were pseudo or poorly aligned, and nominal P-values were directly used to identify positively selected genes (Fletcher and Yang, 2010;Sahm et al, 2017b). If the genes had a P-value below 0.05 and amino acid sites with a bayes empirical bayes (BEB) probability above 0.9, they were regarded as the positively selected genes (Lan et al, 2017(Lan et al, , 2018Sun et al, 2017).…”

Species comparison of liver proteomes reveals links to naked mole-rat longevity and human aging

“…In this perspective, a subterranean rodent, the naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber, NMR), and humans represent two species outliers by having an exceptionally long lifespan relatively to their body mass. NMRs are eusocial animals that live in colonies where only a subgroup of animals is devoted to reproduction (usually a queen and one male called pasha) [2]. NMRs exhibit other exceptional traits including lifelong fertility, resistance to infection, high regenerative capacity, resistance to cancer and diabetes, reviewed in [3,4].…”

Higher transcriptome stability during aging in long-lived giant mole-rats compared to short-lived rats

“…The assembly of the giant mole-rat transcript catalog was performed based on recently published read data ([23], ENA study PRJEB20584) and the assembly framework FRAMA [24] using default parameters. For rat, mRNA sequences were obtained from RefSeq.…”