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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 Dec 17.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Biol. 2018 Dec 6;28(24):4001–4008.e7. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.10.050

Figure 2. Genes Under Positive Selection in Long-lived Birds.

Figure 2.

(A) Plot of the strength of selective pressure for the set of genes with significantly different nonsynonymous to synonymous substitution ratios (dn/ds, or ω) between high-longevity birds (HL) and regular-longevity birds (RL, baseline). Genes with known lifespan effect in model systems (from GenAge [15]) are highlighted in yellow; candidate longevity-influencing genes with no previously reported lifespan data are highlighted in purple. (B) Table of the major gene functional categories enriched in genes with differential selection in HL birds. (C) Comparative multiple sequence alignment of TERT proteins across avian species and human, with sites under positive selection in long-lived birds indicated in red and metal binding sites in green, all occurring within the reverse transcriptase domain, in blue. Scales indicate amino acid position within alignments. (D) Crystal structure of TERT reverse transcriptase catalytic subunit. Positively selected residues are in red, which are in close physical proximity to metal binding sites critical for catalytic activity, in green. PDB accession number: TERT, 3DU6. See also Table S2, Data S1.