The birth, death, and evolutionary compensation of uORFs in Drosophila - PubMed
4 hours ago
- #Drosophila
- #translational regulation
- #uORF evolution
- The study analyzes uORF evolution in Drosophila and finds pervasive birth-death turnover.
- Gains of upstream start codons (uATGs) exceed losses, influenced by mutation and selection.
- Conservation of uATGs correlates with translational evidence, linking retention to translational output.
- Lineage-specific uATGs reduce translation of downstream coding sequences, showing lineage-dependent effects.
- Evolutionary compensation between uATG gain and loss events within genes is identified, with functional assays supporting frequent and condition-dependent impacts on translation.
- At the population level, canonical uORF variants show signatures of population-specific selection, suggesting a role in local adaptation.
- Overall, natural selection, translational regulation, and evolutionary turnover jointly shape the uORF landscape in Drosophila.