Parallel evolution of domesticated Caenorhabditis species targets pheromone receptor genes

Patrick T. McGrath, Yifan Xu, Michael Ailion, Jennifer L. Garrison, Rebecca A. Butcher and Cornelia I. Bargmann ()
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Patrick T. McGrath: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior, The Rockefeller University
Yifan Xu: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior, The Rockefeller University
Michael Ailion: University of Utah
Jennifer L. Garrison: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior, The Rockefeller University
Rebecca A. Butcher: University of Florida
Cornelia I. Bargmann: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior, The Rockefeller University

Nature, 2011, vol. 477, issue 7364, 321-325

Abstract: When the worms turned If we could return the planet to ancestral conditions, asked the late Stephen Jay Gould, would we get a replay of the same evolutionary movie? Focusing on the simpler case of nematode domestication, McGrath et al. find that two Caenorhabditis elegans lines and Caenorhabditis briggsae, a species separated by some 20 million years from C. elegans, independently accumulated mutations in a conserved set of pheromone receptor genes, thus reducing the worms' natural trend to hibernate in overcrowded conditions. Such convergence in the adaptation process shows that evolution can indeed be quite reproducible, at least under some specific environmental constraints.

Date: 2011
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DOI: 10.1038/nature10378

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