Vandewege, Michael W.Mangum, Sarah F.Gabaldón Estevan, Juan Antonio, 1973-Castoe, Todd A.Ray, David A.Hoffmann, Federico G.2016-06-022016-06-022016Vandewege MW, Mangum SF, Gabaldón T, Castoe TA, Ray DA, Hoffmann FG. Contrasting patterns of evolutionary diversification in the olfactory repertoires of reptile and bird genomes. Genome biology and evolution. 2016; 8(3): 470-480. DOI 10.1093/gbe/evw0131759-6653http://hdl.handle.net/10230/26806Olfactory receptors (ORs) are membrane proteins that mediate the detection of odorants in the environment, and are the largest vertebrate gene family. Comparative studies of mammalian genomes indicate that OR repertoires vary widely, even between closely related lineages, as a consequence of frequent OR gains and losses. Several studies also suggest that mammalian OR repertoires are influenced by life history traits. Sauropsida is a diverse group of vertebrates group that is the sister group to mammals, and includes birds, testudines, squamates, and crocodilians, and represents a natural system to explore predictions derived from mammalian studies. In this study, we analyzed olfactory receptor (OR) repertoire variation among several representative species and found that the number of intact OR genes in sauropsid genomes analyzed ranged over an order of magnitude, from 108 in the green anole to over 1,000 in turtles. Our results suggest that different sauropsid lineages have highly divergent OR repertoire composition that derive from lineage-specific combinations of gene expansions, losses, and retentions of ancestral OR genes. These differences also suggest that varying degrees of adaption related to life history have shaped the unique OR repertoires observed across sauropsid lineages.application/pdfeng© The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution./nThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Genètica evolutivainfo:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evw013ORsSauropsidaGene duplicationGene family evolutioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess