Molecular convergence and transgenic evidence suggest a single origin of laryngeal echolocation in bats

Zhen Liu; Peng Chen; Dong-Ming Xu; Fei-Yan Qi; Yuan-Ting Guo; Qi Liu; Jing Bai; Xin Zhou; Peng Shi

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.104114

Molecular convergence and transgenic evidence suggest a single origin of laryngeal echolocation in bats

iScience. 2022 Mar 18;25(4):104114. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104114. eCollection 2022 Apr 15.

Authors

Zhen Liu¹, Peng Chen^{1

2}, Dong-Ming Xu¹, Fei-Yan Qi¹, Yuan-Ting Guo^{1

2}, Qi Liu^{1

2}, Jing Bai^{1

2}, Xin Zhou¹, Peng Shi^{1

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
³ School of Future Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
⁴ Center for Excellence in Animal Evolution and Genetics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China.

Abstract

The laryngeal echolocation is regarded as one of the conspicuous traits that play major roles in flourishing bats. Whether the laryngeal echolocation in bats originated once, however, is still controversial. We here address this question by performing molecular convergence analyses between ancestral branches of bats and toothed whales. Compared with controls, the molecular convergences were enriched in hearing-related genes for the last common ancestor of bats (LCAB) and extant echolocating bats, but not for the LCA of Old World fruit bats (LCAP). And the convergent hearing gene prestin of the LCAB and the extant echolocating bats functionally converged. More importantly, the high-frequency hearing of the LCAP-prestin knock-in mice decreased with lower cochlear outer hair cell function compared with the LCAB-prestin knock-in mice. Together, our findings provide multiple lines of evidence suggesting a single origin of laryngeal echolocation in the LCAB and the subsequent loss in the LCAP.

Keywords: Biological sciences; Evolutionary biology; Genetics; Phylogenetics.