The genome of the green anole lizard and a comparative analysis with birds and mammals

By Jessica Alföldi, F. Di Palma, Manfred G. Grabherr, Christina L. Williams, Lesheng Kong, E. Mauceli, Pamela Russell, C. B. Lowe, Richard E. Glor, Jacob D. Jaffe and 39 more. Nature, 2011

645 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The evolution of the amniotic egg was one of the great evolutionary innovations in the history of life, freeing vertebrates from an obligatory connection to water and thus permitting the conquest of terrestrial environments. Among amniotes, genome sequences are available for mammals and birds, but not for non-avian reptiles. Here we report the genome sequence of the North American green anole lizard, Anolis carolinensis. We find that A. carolinensis microchromosomes are highly syntenic with chicken microchromosomes, yet do not exhibit the high GC and low repeat content that are characteristic of avian microchromosomes. Also, A. carolinensis mobile elements are very young and diverse—more so than in any other sequenced amniote genome. The GC content of this lizard genome is also unusual in its homogeneity, unlike the regionally variable GC content found in mammals and birds. We describe and assign sequence to the previously unknown A. carolinensis X chromosome. Comparative gene analysis shows that amniote egg proteins have evolved significantly more rapidly than other proteins. An anole phylogeny resolves basal branches to illuminate the history of their repeated adaptive radiations.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Molecular Biology, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bf93ad7c37d06fb0814449698c37cea43a30c6ad

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Citations in the corpus

Sexual dimorphism of heads and abdomens: Different approaches to 'being large' in female and male lizards (2013, background): “…20.7 10.4 21.7 NA Oviparous 10 9 Schettino 1999 Nicholson et al. 2005 Dactyloidae Anolis cuvieri 37.4 83.5 40.4 90.6 1 Oviparous 27 16 Schoener 1970 Alfoldi et al. 2011 10 Family Species female head length female abdomen length male head length male abdomen length mean clutch size reproductive…”
The UCSC Genome Browser database: extensions and updates 2011 (2011, background): “0/myoLuc2) from the Broad Institute; the turkey ( Meleagris gallopavo ) draft assembly (TGC Turkey_2.”
Ensembl 2012 (2011, background): “Genome articles have been published for orang-utan (Pongo abelii) (18), anole lizard (Anolis carolinensis) (19) and tamar wallaby (Macropus eugenii) (20).”
The Genome 10K Project: A Way Forward (2015, neutral): “Opossums (87, 1) Caenolestids (6, 0) Monito del Monte (1, 1) Marsupial moles (2, 0) Bandicoots (21, 0) Dasyurids, numbat (71, 1) Kangaroos, koala, possums, wallabies (143, 1)”