Signals of positive selection in genomes of palearctic Myotis-bats coexisting with a fungal pathogen

Victoria Gwendoline Twort, Veronika Laine, Kenneth A. Field, Flora Whiting-Fawcett, Fernanda Ito dos Santos, Maria Onerva Reiman, Tomas Bartonicka, Marcus Fritze, Viktor Ilyukha, Vladimir Belkin, Evgheniy Khizhkin, DeeAnn Reeder, Dai Fukui, T.L Jiang, Thomas M. Lilley

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

Abstract

Disease can act as a driving force in shaping genetic makeup across populations, even species, if the impacts influence a particularly sensitive part of their life cycles. White-nose disease is caused by a fungal pathogen infecting bats during hibernation. The mycosis has caused massive population declines of susceptible species in North America, particularly in the genus Myotis. However, Myotis bats appear to tolerate infection in Eurasia, where the fungal pathogen has co-evolved with its bat hosts for an extended period of time. Therefore, with susceptible and tolerant populations, the fungal disease provides a unique opportunity to tease apart factors contributing to tolerance at a genomic level to and gain an understanding of the evolution of non-harmful in host-parasite interactions. To investigate if the fungal disease has caused adaptation on a genomic level in Eurasian bat species, we adopted both whole-genome sequencing approaches and a literature search to compile a set of 300 genes from which to investigate signals of positive selection in genomes of 11 Eurasian bats at the codon-level. Our results indicate significant positive selection in 38 genes, many of which have a marked role in responses to infection. Our findings suggest that white-nose syndrome may have applied a significant selective pressure on Eurasian Myotis-bats in the past, which can contribute their survival in co-existence with the pathogen. Our findings provide an insight on the selective pressure pathogens afflict on their hosts using methodology that can be adapted to other host-pathogen study systems.
Original languageEnglish
Article number828
JournalBMC Genomics
Volume25
Issue number1
Number of pages16
ISSN1471-2164
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 3 Sept 2024
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Fields of Science

  • 1181 Ecology, evolutionary biology
  • 1184 Genetics, developmental biology, physiology

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