Substantial hierarchical reductions of genetic and morphological traits in the evolution of rotiferan parasites

Abstract Figure

During the last 800 million years of evolution animals radiated into a vast range of diversity of species and disparity of forms and lifestyles. The process involved a near hierarchical increase in complexity from life forms with few cell types to organisms with many hundreds of cell-types. However, neither genome size nor number of protein-coding genes can explain these differences and their biological basis remains elusive. Yet, recent studies have suggested that the evolution of complexity is closely linked to the acquisition of a class of protein coding gene-regulators called microRNAs.

In a regressive approach, to investigate the association between loss of organismal complexity and microRNAs, we here studied Syndermata, an invertebrate group including free-living rotifers (Monogononta, Bdelloidea), the epibiotic Seisonidea and the endoparasitic Acanthocephala. Genomic, transcriptomic and morphological characterization and comparisons across 25 syndermatan species revealed a strong correlation between loss of microRNAs, loss of protein-coding genes and decreasing morphological complexity. The near hierarchical loss extends to ∼85% loss of microRNAs and a ∼50% loss of BUSCO genes in the endoparasitic Acanthocephala, the most reduced group we studied.

Together, the loss of ∼400 protein-coding genes and ∼10 metazoan core gene losses went along with one microRNA family loss. Furthermore, the loss of ∼4 microRNA families or ∼34 metazoan core genes associated with one lost morphological feature. These are the first quantitative insights into the regulatory impact of microRNAs on organismic complexity as a predictable consequence in regressive evolution of parasites.