Molecular evolution of cytochrome C oxidase-I protein of insects living in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The study underpins barcode characterization of insect species collected from Saudi Arabia and explored functional constraints during evolution at the DNA and protein levels to expect the possible mechanisms of protein evolution in insects. Codon structure designated AT-biased insect barcode of the cytochrome C oxidase I (COI). In addition, the predicted 3D structure of COI protein indicated tyrosine in close proximity with the heme ligand, depicted substitution to phenylalanine in two Hymenopteran species. This change resulted in the loss of chemical bonding with the heme ligand. The estimated nucleotide substitution matrices in insect COI barcode generally showed a higher probability of transversion compared with the transition. Computations of codon-by-codon nonsynonymous substitutions in Hymenopteran and Hemipteran species indicated that almost half of the codons are under positive evolution. Nevertheless, codons of COI barcode of Coleoptera, Lepidoptera and Diptera are mostly under purifying selection. The results reinforce that codons in helices 2, 5 and 6 and those in loops 2–3 and 5–6 are mostly conserved and approach strong purifying selection. The overall results argue the possible evolutionary position of Hymenopteran species among those of other insects.

Molecular analysis of Taro and Bali cattle using cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) in Indonesia

“…However, these changes do not always lead to alterations in the genes, since there were amino acids coded for more than one genetic sequence. The cytochrome-C oxidase genes were coded for functional cytochrome amino acids (Pierron et al 2014;Skibinski et al 2017;Sabir et al 2019). The amino acid composition of the protein encoded in the COI gene rarely undergoes substitution (Quax et al 2015;Liu et al 2017).…”

Advantages of an easy-to-use DNA extraction method for minimal-destructive analysis of collection specimens

“… These two partitions appeared to be appropriate from all we know about the different evolutionary rates and selection pressures of the different codon positions and protein-coding genes compared to non-protein-coding genes [ 108 – 111 ]. …”

“…The splitting of H. centralasiae into two branches separated by other species, including H. siehei, could suggest two mitochondrial lineages within this species, with the paralectotype (MTD-TW 9228) showing one mitochondrial lineage and the two samples FN386551 and FN386553 representing another lineage. The origin and species status of Hyles svetlana is not yet clear and is still discussed [115,116], but the grouping in the cluster including some H. siehei and the H. centralasiae paralectotype could These two partitions appeared to be appropriate from all we know about the different evolutionary rates and selection pressures of the different codon positions and protein-coding genes compared to non-protein-coding genes [108][109][110][111].…”

Brain Size, Metabolism, and Social Evolution

“…COX subunit isoforms may influence cellular metabolism (Taanman et al, 1994 ; Kadenbach, 2017 ; Chicherin et al, 2019 , Reguera et al, 2020 ). Ants and other insects exhibit genetic diversity in COX (Liu and Beckenbach, 1992 ; Lunt et al, 1996 ) that may affect metabolic efficiency (Sabir et al, 2019 ).…”