A metaanalysis of bat phylogenetics and positive selection based on genomes and transcriptomes from 18 species

Hawkins, John A.; Kaczmarek, Maria E.; Müller, Marcel A.; Drosten, Christian; Press, William H.; Sawyer, Sara L.

The same data required to investigate phylogeny-namely, multiple sequence alignments of all available genes-is also highly valuable for guiding research into selective pressures that have influenced the genomes of bats. Of particular interest would be genes that have undergone positive natural selection in bats, possibly allowing them to better survive infection by viruses but also likely improving other processes that are specific to bat physiology, immunology, or ecology (18) (19) (20) . Positive natural selection produces in gene alignments an unusually high ratio of DNA substitutions which change the protein sequence (dN) to those that do not (dS), measured by dN/dS > 1 (21, 22) . Limited previous analysis of positive selection in bat genomes has been performed. Typically, selection has been analyzed only in key gene families for specific purposes (13, 23, 24) . These studies yielded interesting results, but we still lack a holistic view of the categories of genes most affected by selection in bat genomes.