Evolution of the ABPA Subunit of Androgen-Binding Protein Expressed in the Submaxillary Glands in New and Old World Rode
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Evolution of the ABPA Subunit of Androgen-Binding Protein Expressed in the Submaxillary Glands in New and Old World Rodent Taxa Michael W. Vandewege • Carleton J. Phillips Jeffrey K. Wickliffe • Federico G. Hoffmann
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Received: 19 July 2012 / Accepted: 12 April 2013 / Published online: 1 May 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
Abstract The salivary androgen-binding proteins (ABPs) are members of the secretoglobin gene family present in mammals. Each ABP is a heterodimer assembled as an ABPA subunit encoded by an Abpa gene and linked by disulfide bridges to an ABPBG subunit encoded by an Abpbg gene. The ABP dimers are secreted into the saliva of mice and then transferred to the pelage after grooming and subsequently to the environment allowing an animal to mark territory with a biochemical signal. The putative role of the mouse salivary ABPs is that of pheromones mediating mate selection resulting in assortative mating in the Mus musculus species complex. We focused on comparing patterns of molecular evolution between the Abpa genes expressed in the submaxillary glands of species of New World and Old World muroids. We found that in both sets
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00239-013-9561-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. M. W. Vandewege F. G. Hoffmann (&) Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Entomology and Plant Pathology, Mississippi State University, P. O. Box 9655, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA e-mail: [email protected] C. J. Phillips Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA J. K. Wickliffe Department of Global Environmental Health Sciences, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70112, USA F. G. Hoffmann Institute for Genomics, Biocomputing and Biotechnology, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA
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of rodents the Abpa genes expressed in the submaxillary glands appear to be evolving under a similar evolutionary regime, with relatively high nonsynonymous substitution rates, suggesting that ABP might play a similar biological role in both systems. Thus, ABP could be involved with mate recognition and species isolation in New World as well as Old World muroids. Keywords Synonymous substitution Nonsynonymous substitutions Rodentia Positive selection Salivary ABP
Introduction Speciation can be driven by the isolation of two populations through geographic, temporal, ecological, or behavioral barriers (see Coyne and Orr 2004 for an extended discussion). In many mammals olfaction is a dominant sensory modality and chemical cues can be used to convey information about individuality. In the common house mouse (Mus musculus) subspecies complex, the salivary androgen-binding proteins (ABPs) are hypothesized to be a component of such a cue, as they are thought to mediate mate recognition (Laukaitis et al. 1997; Talley et al. 2001). ABPs are secretoglobins (Klug et al. 2000; Laukaitis et al. 2005; La
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