Towards a quantitative view of the NLR gene family evolution in the genome space

Abstract

Content of image described in text. Abstract Plants and their pathogens coevolve over long time periods, and the history of coevolution is recorded in plant genes that confer pathogen resistance (many coding for nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat proteins, NLRs). Advances in the ability to sequence genomes from many different species as well as many genomes from the same species reveal that 1) the number of NLR genes differs widely between species and 2) NLR genes may exhibit extensive nucleotide variation as well as presence/absence polymorphism within species. In the light of the latest insights into the genomic features associated with NLR gene diversity, we aim here to evaluate the contribution of forces involved in NLR gene family evolution: mutation, recombination, gene duplication and deletion and natural selection. We highlight novel combinations of population genomics methods and statistics that can provide an improved framework for describing NLR gene family evolution in the genome space.