Evolution of recombination and genome structure in eusocial insects

Abstract

Eusocial Hymenoptera, such as the European honey bee, Apis mellifera, have the highest recombination rates of multicellular animals.(1) Recently, we showed(2) that a side-effect of recombination in the honey bee, GC biased gene conversion (bGC), helps maintain the unusual bimodal GC-content distribution of the bee genome by increasing GC-content in high recombination areas while low recombination areas are losing GC-content because of biased AT mutations and low rates of bGC. Although the very high recombination rate of A. mellifera makes GC-content evolution easier to study, the pattern is consistent with results found in many other species including mammals and yeast.(3) Also consistent across phyla is the association of higher genetic diversity and divergence with high GC and high recombination areas.(4) (,) (5) Finally, we showed that genes overexpressed in the brains of workers cluster in GC-rich genomic areas with the highest rates of recombination and molecular evolution.(2) In this Addendum we present a conceptual model of how eusociality and high recombination rates may co-evolve.