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Van Nynatten A, Castiglione GM, de A Gutierrez E, Lovejoy NR, Chang BSW. Recreated Ancestral Opsin Associated with Marine to Freshwater Croaker Invasion Reveals Kinetic and Spectral Adaptation. Mol Biol Evol 2021; 38:2076-2087. [PMID: 33481002 PMCID: PMC8097279 DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msab008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Rhodopsin, the light-sensitive visual pigment expressed in rod photoreceptors, is specialized for vision in dim-light environments. Aquatic environments are particularly challenging for vision due to the spectrally dependent attenuation of light, which can differ greatly in marine and freshwater systems. Among fish lineages that have successfully colonized freshwater habitats from ancestrally marine environments, croakers are known as highly visual benthic predators. In this study, we isolate rhodopsins from a diversity of freshwater and marine croakers and find that strong positive selection in rhodopsin is associated with a marine to freshwater transition in South American croakers. In order to determine if this is accompanied by significant shifts in visual abilities, we resurrected ancestral rhodopsin sequences and tested the experimental properties of ancestral pigments bracketing this transition using in vitro spectroscopic assays. We found the ancestral freshwater croaker rhodopsin is redshifted relative to its marine ancestor, with mutations that recapitulate ancestral amino acid changes along this transitional branch resulting in faster kinetics that are likely to be associated with more rapid dark adaptation. This could be advantageous in freshwater due to the redshifted spectrum and relatively narrow interface and frequent transitions between bright and dim-light environments. This study is the first to experimentally demonstrate that positively selected substitutions in ancestral visual pigments alter protein function to freshwater visual environments following a transition from an ancestrally marine state and provides insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying some of the physiological changes associated with this major habitat transition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexander Van Nynatten
- Department of Cell and Systems Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.,Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, Scarborough, ON, Canada
| | - Gianni M Castiglione
- Department of Cell and Systems Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.,Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Eduardo de A Gutierrez
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Nathan R Lovejoy
- Department of Cell and Systems Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.,Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, Scarborough, ON, Canada.,Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Belinda S W Chang
- Department of Cell and Systems Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.,Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.,Centre for the Analysis of Genome Evolution and Function, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
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Gomes-Silva G, Pereira BB, Liu K, Chen B, Santos VSV, de Menezes GHT, Pires LP, Santos BMT, Oliveira DM, Machado PHA, de Oliveira Júnior RJ, de Oliveira AMM, Plath M. Using native and invasive livebearing fishes (Poeciliidae, Teleostei) for the integrated biological assessment of pollution in urban streams. THE SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT 2020; 698:134336. [PMID: 31783440 DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134336] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/11/2019] [Revised: 08/14/2019] [Accepted: 09/05/2019] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
Invasive species are increasingly replacing native species, especially in anthropogenically transformed or polluted habitats. This opens the possibility to use invasive species as indicator taxa for the biological assessment of pollution. Integrated biological assessment, however, additionally relies on the application of multiple approaches to quantify physiological or cytogenetic responses to pollution within the same focal species. This is challenging when species are restricted to either polluted or unpolluted sites. Here, we make use of a small group of neotropical livebearing fishes (family Poeciliidae) for the integrated biological assessment of water quality. Comparing urban and suburban stream sections that receive varying degrees of pollution from industrial and domestic waste waters in and around the Brazilian city of Uberlândia, we demonstrate that two members of this family may indeed serve as indicators of water pollution levels. The native species Phalloceros caudimaculatus appears to be replaced by invasive guppies (Poecilia reticulata) at heavily polluted sites. Nevertheless, we demonstrate that both species could be used for the assessment of bioaccumulation of heavy metals (Pb, Cu, and Cr). Ambient (sediment) concentrations predicted concentrations in somatic tissue across species (R2-values between 0.74 and 0.96). Moreover, we used cytogenetic methods to provide an estimate of genotoxic effects of water pollution and found pollution levels (multiple variables, condensed into principal components) to predict the occurrence of nuclear abnormalities (e.g., frequencies of micro-nucleated cells) across species (R2 between 0.69 and 0.83). The occurrence of poeciliid fishes in urban and polluted environments renders this family a prime group of focal organisms for biological water quality monitoring and assessment. Both species could be used interchangeably to assess genotoxic effects of water pollution, which may facilitate future comparative analyses over extensive geographic scales, as members of the family Poeciliidae have become invasive in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide.
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Affiliation(s)
- Guilherme Gomes-Silva
- College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, PR China
| | - Boscolli Barbosa Pereira
- Institute of Geography, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, Uberlândia, Brazil; Institute of Biotechnology, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, Uberlândia, Brazil
| | - Kai Liu
- College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, PR China
| | - Bojian Chen
- College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, PR China
| | | | | | - Luís Paulo Pires
- Institute of Biology, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, Uberlândia, Brazil
| | | | | | | | | | | | - Martin Plath
- College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, PR China; Shaanxi Key Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Agriculture, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, PR China.
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