Functional divergence of duplicate genes several million years after gene duplication in Arabidopsis

Lineage-specific duplicated genes likely contribute to the phenotypic divergence in closely related species. However, neither the frequency of duplication events nor the degree of selection pressures immediately after gene duplication is clear in the speciation process. Here, using Illumina DNA-sequencing reads from Arabidopsis halleri, which has multiple closely related species with high-quality genome assemblies (A. thaliana and A. lyrata), we succeeded in generating orthologous gene groups in Brassicaceae. The duplication frequency of retained genes in the Arabidopsis lineage was ∼10 times higher than the duplication frequency inferred by comparative genomics of Arabidopsis, poplar, rice and moss (Physcomitrella patens). The difference of duplication frequencies can be explained by a rapid decay of anciently duplicated genes. To examine the degree of selection pressure on genes duplicated in either the A. halleri-lyrata or the A. halleri lineage, we examined positive and purifying selection in the A. halleri-lyrata and A. halleri lineages throughout the ratios of nonsynonymous to synonymous substitution rates (K(A)/K(S)). Duplicate genes tended to have a higher proportion of positive selection compared with non-duplicated genes. Interestingly, we found that functional divergence of duplicated genes was accelerated several million years after gene duplication compared with immediately after gene duplication.