4.3 Adaptive mechanism of metabolism related genes
Through the analysis of GO terms enriched by positive selection genes,
we found that positive selection genes were mainly significantly
enriched in GO terms related to metabolism, and involved in various
metabolic processes, for example: oxidation-reduction process, lipid
metabolism process, catabolic process, and biosynthesis process. The
abundance of these metabolism-related positive selection genes in
specieslow indicates that these species have the
stronger positive selection in energy metabolism or biosynthesis than
other species.
Adaptation of energy metabolism plays a very important role in the
evolutionary process of species. Bats can fly, which requires huge
energy consumption (Shen et al., 2010),
so genes related to energy metabolism play an important role in the
evolutionary process of bats. Due to the high efficiency of aerobic
respiration, which plays a major role in the energy supply process,
specieslow can obtain more energy by improving
mitochondria and oxidation-reduction pathways. Some positive selection
genes and positive selection sites were detected in mitochondria
(Zhang et al., 2021), the main energy
supply organelles, which is consistent with the results of positive
selection detected in genes related to energy metabolism in this study.
These results suggested that energy-related genes have undergone
adaptive evolution in specieslow, and these species have
a stronger selective role in energy metabolism and may improve some
aspects of adaptability by regulating energy metabolism in the process
of evolution.
Although GO terms enriched by positive selection genes are mostly
related to metabolism, there are differences in GO terms enriched among
different species, indicating that these species may experience
different evolutionary processes, and corresponding genes may play
potentially important roles in the evolutionary process of different
species.