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Heredity (Edinb)

Title:		Variation in mate-recognition pheromones of the fungal genus Microbotryum
Author(s):		Xu L; Petit E; Hood ME;
Address:		"Department of Biology, Amherst College, Amherst, MA, USA"
Journal Title:		Heredity (Edinb)
Year:		2016
Volume:		20150826
Issue:		1
Page Number:		44 - 51
DOI:		10.1038/hdy.2015.68
ISSN/ISBN:		1365-2540 (Electronic) 0018-067X (Print) 0018-067X (Linking)
Abstract:		"Mate recognition is an essential life-cycle stage that exhibits strong conservation in function, whereas diversification of mating signals can contribute directly to the integrity of species boundaries through assortative mating. Fungi are simple models, where compatibility is based on the recognition of pheromone peptides by corresponding receptor proteins, but clear patterns of diversification have not emerged from the species examined, which are few compared with mate signaling studies in plant and animal systems. In this study, candidate loci from Microbotryum species were used to characterize putative pheromones that were synthesized and found to be functional across multiple species in triggering a mating response in vitro. There is no significant correlation between the strength of a species' response and its genetic distance from the pheromone sequence source genome. Instead, evidence suggests that species may be strong or weak responders, influenced by environmental conditions or developmental differences. Gene sequence comparisons reveals very strong purifying selection on the a1 pheromone peptide and corresponding receptor, but significantly less purifying selection on the a2 pheromone peptide that corresponds with more variation across species in the receptor. This represents an exceptional case of a reciprocally interacting mate-recognition system in which the two mating types are under different levels of purifying selection"
Keywords:		"Amino Acid Sequence Basidiomycota/*genetics *Genes, Mating Type, Fungal *Genetic Variation Molecular Sequence Data Pheromones/*genetics Phylogeny Selection, Genetic;"
Notes:		"MedlineXu, L Petit, E Hood, M E eng Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. England 2015/08/27 Heredity (Edinb). 2016 Jan; 116(1):44-51. doi: 10.1038/hdy.2015.68. Epub 2015 Aug 26"