Assessing parallel gene histories in viral genomes

BACKGROUND: The increasing abundance of sequence data has exacerbated a long known problem: gene trees and species trees for the same terminal taxa are often incongruent. Indeed, genes within a genome have not all followed the same evolutionary path due to events such as incomplete lineage sorting, horizontal gene transfer, gene duplication and deletion, or recombination. Considering conflicts between gene trees as an obstacle, numerous methods have been developed to deal with these incongruences and to reconstruct consensus evolutionary histories of species despite the heterogeneity in the history of their genes. However, inconsistencies can also be seen as a source of information about the specific evolutionary processes that have shaped genomes. RESULTS: The goal of the approach here proposed is to exploit this conflicting information: we have compiled eleven variables describing phylogenetic relationships and evolutionary pressures and submitted them to dimensionality reduction techniques to identify genes with similar evolutionary histories. To illustrate the applicability of the method, we have chosen two viral datasets, namely papillomaviruses and Turnip mosaic virus (TuMV) isolates, largely dissimilar in genome, evolutionary distance and biology. Our method pinpoints viral genes with common evolutionary patterns. In the case of papillomaviruses, gene clusters match well our knowledge on viral biology and life cycle, illustrating the potential of our approach. For the less known TuMV, our results trigger new hypotheses about viral evolution and gene interaction. CONCLUSIONS: The approach here presented allows turning phylogenetic inconsistencies into evolutionary information, detecting gene assemblies with similar histories, and could be a powerful tool for comparative pathogenomics. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-016-0605-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.