Authors: Zhang, Guojie and Li, Cai and Li, Qiye and Li, Bo and Larkin, Denis M and Lee, Chul and Storz, Jay F and Antunes, Agostinho and Greenwold, Matthew J and Meredith, Robert W and Ödeen, Anders and Cui, Jie and Zhou, Qi and Xu, Luohao and Pan, Hailin and Wang, Zongji and Jin, Lijun and Zhang, Pei and Hu, Haofu and Yang, Wei and Hu, Jiang and Xiao, Jin and Yang, Zhikai and Liu, Yang and Xie, Qiaolin and Yu, Hao and Lian, Jinmin and Wen, Ping and Zhang, Fang and Li, Hui and Zeng, Yongli and Xiong, Zijun and Liu, Shiping and Zhou, Long and Huang, Zhiyong and An, Na and Wang, Jie and Zheng, Qiumei and Xiong, Yingqi and Wang, Guangbiao and Wang, Bo and Wang, Jingjing and Fan, Yu and da Fonseca, Rute R and Alfaro-Núñez, Alonzo and Schubert, Mikkel and Orlando, Ludovic and Mourier, Tobias and Howard, Jason T and Ganapathy, Ganeshkumar and Pfenning, Andreas and Whitney, Osceola and Rivas, Miriam V and Hara, Erina and Smith, Julia and Farré, Marta and Narayan, Jitendra and Slavov, Gancho and Romanov, Michael N and Borges, Rui and Machado, João Paulo and Khan, Imran and Springer, Mark S and Gatesy, John and Hoffmann, Federico G and Opazo, Juan C and Håstad, Olle and Sawyer, Roger H and Kim, Heebal and Kim, Kyu-Won and Kim, Hyeon Jeong and Cho, Seoae and Li, Ning and Huang, Yinhua and Bruford, Michael W and Zhan, Xiangjiang and Dixon, Andrew and Bertelsen, Mads F and Derryberry, Elizabeth and Warren, Wesley and Wilson, Richard K and Li, Shengbin and Ray, David A and Green, Richard E and O'Brien, Stephen J and Griffin, Darren and Johnson, Warren E and Haussler, David and Ryder, Oliver A and Willerslev, Eske and Graves, Gary R and Alström, Per and Fjeldså, Jon and Mindell, David P and Edwards, Scott V and Braun, Edward L and Rahbek, Carsten and Burt, David W and Houde, Peter and Zhang, Yong and Yang, Huanming and Wang, Jian and Jarvis, Erich D and Gilbert, M Thomas P and Wang, Jun
Birds are the most species-rich class of tetrapod vertebrates and have wide relevance across many research fields. We explored bird macroevolution using full genomes from 48 avian species representing all major extant clades. The avian genome is principally characterized by its constrained size, which predominantly arose because of lineage-specific erosion of repetitive elements, large segmental deletions, and gene loss. Avian genomes furthermore show a remarkably high degree of evolutionary stasis at the levels of nucleotide sequence, gene synteny, and chromosomal structure. Despite this pattern of conservation, we detected many non-neutral evolutionary changes in protein-coding genes and noncoding regions. These analyses reveal that pan-avian genomic diversity covaries with adaptations to different lifestyles and convergent evolution of traits. Copyright © 2014, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Journal: Science
DOI: 10.1126/science.1251385
Year: 2014
Read publication