Abstract
Long-lived rodents have become an attractive model for the studies on aging. To understand evolutionary paths to long life, we prepare chromosome-level genome assemblies of the two longest-lived rodents, Canadian beaver (Castor canadensis) and naked mole rat (NMR, Heterocephalus glaber), which were scaffolded with in vitro proximity ligation and chromosome conformation capture data and complemented with long-read sequencing. Our comparative genomic analyses reveal that amino acid substitutions at “disease-causing” sites are widespread in the rodent genomes and that identical substitutions in long-lived rodents are associated with common adaptive phenotypes, e.g., enhanced resistance to DNA damage and cellular stress. By employing a newly developed substitution model and likelihood ratio test, we find that energy and fatty acid metabolism pathways are enriched for signals of positive selection in both long-lived rodents. Thus, the high-quality genome resource of long-lived rodents can assist in the discovery of genetic factors that control longevity and adaptive evolution.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 107949 |
Journal | Cell Reports |
Volume | 32 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 28 2020 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- aging
- beaver
- chromosome-level assembly
- evolutionary analyses
- gene expression
- genome
- long-lived rodents
- longevity
- naked mole rat
- stress resistance