Genome of the marsupial Monodelphis domestica reveals innovation in non-coding sequences

Tarjei S. Mikkelsen, Matthew J. Wakefield, Bronwen Aken, Chris T. Amemiya, Jean L. Chang, Shannon Duke, Manuel Garber, Andrew J. Gentles, Leo Goodstadt, Andreas Heger, Jerzy Jurka, Michael Kamal, Evan Mauceli, Stephen M J Searle, Ted Sharpe, Michelle L. Baker, Mark A. Batzer, Panayiotis V. Benos, Katherine Belov, Michele ClampApril Cook, James Cuff, Radhika Das, Lance Davidow, Janine E. Deakin, Melissa J. Fazzari, Jacob L. Glass, Manfred Grabherr, John M. Greally, Wanjun Gu, Timothy A. Hore, Gavin A. Huttley, Michael Kleber, Randy L. Jirtle, Edda Koina, Jeannie T. Lee, Shaun Mahony, Marco A. Marra, Robert D. Miller, Robert D. Nicholls, Mayumi Oda, Anthony T. Papenfuss, Zuly E. Parra, David D. Pollock, David A. Ray, Jacqueline E. Schein, Terence P. Speed, Katherine Thompson, John L. VandeBerg, Claire M. Wade, Jerilyn A. Walker, Paul D. Waters, Caleb Webber, Jennifer R. Weidman, Xiaohui Xie, Michael C. Zody, Jennifer Baldwin, Amr Abdouelleil, Jamal Abdulkadir, Adal Abebe, Brikti Abera, Justin Abreu, St Christophe Acer, Lynne Aftuck, Allen Alexander, Peter An, Erica Anderson, Scott Anderson, Harindra Arachi, Marc Azer, Pasang Bachantsang, Andrew Barry, Tashi Bayul, Aaron Berlin, Daniel Bessette, Toby Bloom, Jason Blye, Leonid Boguslavskiy, Claude Bonnet, Boris Boukhgalter, Imane Bourzgui, Adam Brown, Patrick Cahill, Sheridon Channer, Yama Cheshatsang, Lisa Chuda, Mieke Citroen, Alville Collymore, Patrick Cooke, Maura Costello, Katie D'Aco, Riza Daza, Georgius De Haan, Stuart DeGray, Christina DeMaso, Norbu Dhargay, Kimberly Dooley, Erin Dooley, Missole Doricent, Passang Dorje, Kunsang Dorjee, Alan Dupes, Richard Elong, Jill Falk, Abderrahim Farina, Susan Faro, Diallo Ferguson, Sheila Fisher, Chelsea D. Foley, Alicia Franke, Dennis Friedrich, Loryn Gadbois, Gary Gearin, Christina R. Gearin, Georgia Giannoukos, Tina Goode, Joseph Graham, Edward Grandbois, Sharleen Grewal, Kunsang Gyaltsen, Nabil Hafez, Birhane Hagos, Jennifer Hall, Charlotte Henson, Andrew Hollinger, Tracey Honan, Monika D. Huard, Leanne Hughes, Brian Hurhula, M. Erii Husby, Asha Kamat, Ben Kanga, Seva Kashin, Dmitry Khazanovich, Peter Kisner, Krista Lance, Marcia Lara, William Lee, Niall Lennon, Frances Letendre, Rosie LeVine, Alex Lipovsky, Xiaohong Liu, Jinlei Liu, Shangtao Liu, Tashi Lokyitsang, Yeshi Lokyitsang, Rakela Lubonja, Annie Lui, Pen MacDonald, Vasilia Magnisalis, Kebede Maru, Charles Matthews, William McCusker, Susan McDonough, Teena Mehta, James Meldrim, Louis Meneus, Oana Mihai, Atanas Mihalev, Tanya Mihova, Rachel Mittelman, Valentine Mlenga, Anna Montmayeur, Leonidas Mulrain, Adam Navidi, Jerome Naylor, Tamrat Negash, Thu Nguyen, Nga Nguyen, Robert Nicol, Choe Norbu, Nyima Norbu, Nathaniel Novod, Barry O'Neill, Sahal Osman, Eva Markiewicz, Otero L. Oyono, Christopher Patti, Pema Phunkhang, Fritz Pierre, Margaret Priest, Sujaa Raghuraman, Filip Rege, Rebecca Reyes, Cecil Rise, Peter Rogov, Keenan Ross, Elizabeth Ryan, Sampath Settipalli, Terry Shea, Ngawang Sherpa, Lu Shi, Diana Shih, Todd Sparrow, Jessica Spaulding, John Stalker, Nicole Stange-Thomann, Sharon Stavropoulos, Catherine Stone, Christopher Strader, Senait Tesfaye, Talene Thomson, Yama Thoulutsang, Dawa Thoulutsang, Kerri Topham, Ira Topping, Tsamla Tsamla, Helen Vassiliev, Andy Vo, Tsering Wangchuk, Tsering Wangdi, Michael Weiand, Jane Wilkinson, Adam Wilson, Shailendra Yadav, Geneva Young, Qing Yu, Lisa Zembek, Danni Zhong, Andrew Zimmer, Zac Zwirko, David B. Jaffe, Pablo Alvarez, Will Brockman, Jonathan Butler, CheeWhye Chin, Sante Gnerre, Iain MacCallum, Jennifer A Marshall Graves, Chris P. Ponting, Matthew Breen, Paul B. Samollow, Eric S. Lander, Kerstin Lindblad-Toh

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Abstract

We report a high-quality draft of the genome sequence of the grey, short-tailed opossum (Monodelphis domestica). As the first metatherian ('marsupial') species to be sequenced, the opossum provides a unique perspective on the organization and evolution of mammalian genomes. Distinctive features of the opossum chromosomes provide support for recent theories about genome evolution and function, including a strong influence of biased gene conversion on nucleotide sequence composition, and a relationship between chromosomal characteristics and X chromosome inactivation. Comparison of opossum and eutherian genomes also reveals a sharp difference in evolutionary innovation between protein-coding and non-coding functional elements. True innovation in protein-coding genes seems to be relatively rare, with lineage-specific differences being largely due to diversification and rapid turnover in gene families involved in environmental interactions. In contrast, about 20% of eutherian conserved non-coding elements (CNEs) are recent inventions that postdate the divergence of Eutheria and Metatheria. A substantial proportion of these eutherian-specific CNEs arose from sequence inserted by transposable elements, pointing to transposons as a major creative force in the evolution of mammalian gene regulation.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)167-177
Number of pages11
JournalNature
Volume447
Issue number7141
DOIs
StatePublished - May 10 2007

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Acknowledgements Generation of the Monodelphis domestica sequence at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard was supported by grants from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). For work from other members of the Opossum Genome Sequencing Consortium, we acknowledge the support of the National Institutes of Health (NHGRI, NIAID, NLM), the National Science Foundation, the Robert J. Kleberg Jr and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation, the State of Louisiana Board of Regents Support Fund, State of Colorado support funds, the Pittsburgh Foundation, TATRC/DoD, the UK Medical Research Council and the Australian Research Council. We thank colleagues at the UCSC genome browser for providing data (BLASTZ/MULTIZ alignments, synteny nets, and annotations). We thank L. Gaffney for assistance in preparing the manuscript and figures, and J. Danke for flow cytometry data.

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