London, Sept 01 (ANI): Researchers have sequenced the genome of green anole lizard that may offer insights into how the genomes of humans, mammals, and their reptilian counterparts have evolved since mammals and reptiles parted ways 320 million years ago.
The green anole lizard (Anolis carolinensis) - a native of the Southeastern United States - is the first non-bird species of reptile to have its genome sequenced and assembled.
Broad researchers have assembled and analysed more than 20 mammalian genomes - including those of some of our closest relatives - but the genetic landscape of reptiles remains relatively unexplored.
One of the questions this newly sequenced genome may help resolve has to do with the origin of conserved, non-coding elements in the human genome.
These regions do not contain protein-coding genes but are thought to have critical roles since they have remained unchanged for millennia.
Scientists wondered where these mysterious elements came from and hypothesized that they may be the relics of transposons - jumping stretches of DNA that were at one time able to copy and paste themselves throughout the genome.
In humans, many of these so called "jumping genes" have lost their jumping ability, but in anole lizards, they continue to hop.
"Anoles have a living library of transposable elements," said Jessica Alfoldi, co-first author of the paper and a research scientist in the vertebrate genome biology group at the Broad Institute.
The researchers aligned these mobile elements to the human genome, and found that close to 100 of the human genome's non-coding elements are derived from these jumping genes.
"In anoles, these transposons are still hopping around, but evolution has used them for its own purposes, turning them into something functional in humans," added said Alfoldi.
In addition to insights into human and mammalian genomes, the anole lizard's genome also offers up clues about how lizard species evolved to populate islands in the Greater Antilles.
But unlike the Darwin's finches, lizards on different islands have independently evolved diverse communities of these twig, canopy, and grass dwelling species - almost identical lizard species have evolved in parallel on the islands of Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Jamaica.
"These lizards have been compared to Darwin's finches and in many respects they are similar," said Jonathan Losos, an author of the paper, professor at Harvard University, and author of the book 'Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree: Ecology and Adaptive Radiation of Anoles'.
"They show the workings of natural selection as species adapted to different habitats. But the difference is in the case of the lizards, this evolution has happened four times, once on each of the different islands," added Losos.
The study has been published in the journal Nature. (ANI)
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