日前，来自丹麦哥本哈根大学、深圳华大基因研究院的国际研究小组共同主导完成了切叶蚁(Acromyrmex echinatior)的基因组测序与分析工作。此成果为社会行为学等研究奠定了重要的遗传学基础。该研究成果已在国际知名杂志Genome Research (www.genome.org)上在线发表。
农业的发展在人类文化进化过程中具有非常重要的意义,但是人类并不是唯一采用这种生活方式的生物，在中美洲、南美洲以及美国南部,有一种蚂蚁同样能够进行农业生产。通过对切叶蚁全基因组测序及分析，研究人员发现在切叶蚁的基因组中有两个基因家族发生了显著扩张，这也是研究报告中最重要的发现之一。哥本哈根大学社会进化中心的Sanne Nygaard博士说：“我们认为这些基因与该物种的生殖方式和其与真菌所形成的特殊共生关系具有密切关联。与该切叶蚁生殖方式和共生方式的进化相关的特定基因组特征的发现是本项工作的一个重要突破。”（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原文出处;
Genome Research doi:10.1101/gr.121392.111
The genome of the leaf-cutting ant Acromyrmex echinatior suggests key adaptations to advanced social life and fungus farming
Sanne Nygaard, Guojie Zhang, Morten Schitt, Cai Li, Yannick Wurm, Haofu Hu, Jiajian Zhou, Lu Ji, Feng Qiu, Morten Rasmussen, Hailin Pan, Frank Hauser, Anders Krogh, Cornelis J.P. Grimmelikhuijzen, Jun Wang and Jacobus J. Boomsma
We present a high-quality (>100 ×depth) Illumina genome sequence of the leaf-cutting ant Acromyrmex echinatior, a model species for symbiosis and reproductive conflict studies. We compare this genome with three previously sequenced genomes of ants from different subfamilies and focus our analyses on aspects of the genome likely to be associated with known evolutionary changes. The first is the specialized fungal diet of A. echinatior, where we find gene loss in the ant's arginine synthesis pathway, loss of detoxification genes, and expansion of a group of peptidase proteins. One of these is a unique ant-derived contribution to the fecal fluid, which otherwise consists of “garden manuring” fungal enzymes that are unaffected by ant digestion. The second is multiple mating of queens and ejaculate competition, which may be associated with a greatly expanded nardilysin-like peptidase gene family. The third is sex determination, where we could identify only a single homolog of the feminizer gene. As other ants and the honeybee have duplications of this gene, we hypothesize that this may partly explain the frequent production of diploid male larvae in A. echinatior. The fourth is the evolution of eusociality, where we find a highly conserved ant-specific profile of neuropeptide genes that may be related to caste determination. These first analyses of the A. echinatior genome indicate that considerable genetic changes are likely to have accompanied the transition from hunter-gathering to agricultural food production 50 million years ago, and the transition from single to multiple queen mating 10 million years ago.
