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Gene duplication and functional divergence of new genes contributed to the polar acclimation of Antarctic green algae

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Abstract

Psychrophilic microalgae successfully survive in the extreme and highly variable polar ecosystems, which represent the energy base of most food webs and play a fundamental role in nutrient cycling. The success of microalgae is rooted in their adaptive evolution. Revealing how they have evolved to thrive in extreme polar environments will help us better understand the origin of life in polar ecosystems. We isolated a psychrophilic unicellular green alga, Microglena sp. YARC, from Antarctic sea ice which has a huge genome. Therefore, we predicted that gene replication may play an important role in its polar adaptive evolution. We found that its protein-coding gene number significantly increased and the duplication time was dated between 37 and 48 million years ago, which is consistent with the formation of the circumpolar Southern Ocean. Most duplicated paralogous genes were enriched in pathways related to photosynthesis, DNA repair, and fatty acid metabolism. Moreover, there were a total of 657 Microglena-specific families, including collagen-like proteins. The divergence in the expression patterns of the duplicated and species-specific genes reflects sub- and neo-functionalization during stress acclimation. Overall, key findings from this study provide new information on how gene duplication and their functional novelty contributed to polar algae adaptation to the highly variable polar environmental conditions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Programme of China (2022YFD2400105), Laoshan Laboratory (LSKJ202203801), Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2021MD075, ZR202211110025), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41676145, 32000404), Central Public-interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund, CAFS (2023TD28, 2023TD19), China Agriculture Research System (CARS-50), the Young Taishan Scholars Program, Taishan Scholars Program.

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  1. Xiaowen Zhang and Wentao Han have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Mariculture Biobreeding and Sustainable Goods, Yellow Sea Fisheries Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China

    Xiaowen Zhang, Wentao Han, Xiao Fan, Yitao Wang, Dong Xu, Ke Sun, Wei Wang, Yan Zhang, Jian Ma & Naihao Ye

  2. Laboratory for Marine Fisheries Science and Food Production Processes, Laoshan Laboratory, Qingdao, 266200, China

    Xiaowen Zhang & Naihao Ye

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  1. Xiaowen Zhang
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Contributions

XZ and NY: designed the study. XZ, WT, XF and KS: analyzed the data. YW, DX, WW, YZ and JM: conducted the laboratory experiments. WT: drew the figures. XZ: wrote the manuscript. NY: improved and revised the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Naihao Ye.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest. Author Naihao Ye is a member of the Editorial Board, but he was not involved in the journal’s review of, or decision related to this manuscript.

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Edited by Jiamei Li.

Special Topic: EvoDevo.

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Zhang, X., Han, W., Fan, X. et al. Gene duplication and functional divergence of new genes contributed to the polar acclimation of Antarctic green algae. Mar Life Sci Technol 5, 511–524 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42995-023-00203-z

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