Evolution of gene order and chromosome number in Saccharomyces, Kluyveromyces and related fungi

The extent to which the order of genes along chromosomes is conserved between Saccharomyces cerevisiae and related species was studied by analysing data from DNA sequence databases. As expected, the extent of gene order conservation decreases with increasing evolutionary distance. About 59% of adjacent gene pairs in Kluyveromyces lactis or K. marxianus are also adjacent in S. cerevisiae, and a further 16% of Kluyveromyces neighbours can be explained in terms of the inferred ancestral gene order in Saccharomyces prior to the occurrence of an ancient whole-genome duplication. Only 13% of Candida albicans linkages, and no Schizosaccharomyces pombe linkages, are conserved. Analysis of gene order arrangements, chromosome numbers, and ribosomal RNA sequences suggests that genome duplication occurred before the divergence of the four species in Saccharomyces sensu stricto (all of which have 16 chromosomes), but after this lineage had diverged from Saccharomyces kluyveri and the Kluyveromyces lactis/marxianus species assemblage.