Latent homology and convergent regulatory evolution underlies the repeated emergence of yeasts

Nagy, László G. and Ohm, Robin A. and Kovács, Gábor M. and Floudas, Dimitrios and Riley, Robert and Gácser, Attila and Sipiczki, Mátyás and Davis, John M. and Doty, Sharon L. and de Hoog, G Sybren and Lang, B. Franz and Spatafora, Joseph W. and Martin, Francis M. and Grigoriev, Igor V. and Hibbett, David S. (2014) Latent homology and convergent regulatory evolution underlies the repeated emergence of yeasts. Nature Communications, 5. p. 4471. ISSN 2041-1723

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Abstract

Convergent evolution is common throughout the tree of life, but the molecular mechanisms causing similar phenotypes to appear repeatedly are obscure. Yeasts have arisen in multiple fungal clades, but the genetic causes and consequences of their evolutionary origins are unknown. Here we show that the potential to develop yeast forms arose early in fungal evolution and became dominant independently in multiple clades, most likely via parallel diversification of Zn-cluster transcription factors, a fungal-specific family involved in regulating yeast–filamentous switches. Our results imply that convergent evolution can happen by the repeated deployment of a conserved genetic toolkit for the same function in distinct clades via regulatory evolution. We suggest that this mechanism might be a common source of evolutionary convergence even at large time scale.

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