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Abstract T cells are a type of white blood cell that play a critical role in the immune response against foreign pathogens through a process called T cell adaptive immunity (TCAI). However, the evolution of the genes and nucleotide sequences involved in TCAI is not well understood. To investigate this, we performed comparative studies of gene annotations and genome assemblies of 28 vertebrate species and identified sets of human genes that are involved in TCAI, carcinogenesis, and aging. We found that these gene sets share interaction pathways, which may have contributed to the evolution of longevity in the vertebrate lineage leading to humans. Our human gene age dating analyses revealed that there was rapid origination of genes with TCAI-related functions prior to the Cretaceous eutherian radiation and these new genes mainly encode negative regulators. We identified no new TCAI-related genes after the divergence of placental mammals, but we did detect an extensive number of amino acid substitutions under strong positive selection in recently evolved human immunity genes suggesting they are coevolving with adaptive immunity. More specifically, we observed that antigen processing and presentation and checkpoint genes are significantly enriched among new genes evolving under positive selection. These observations reveal evolutionary processes of TCAI that were associated with rapid gene duplication in the early stages of vertebrates and subsequent sequence changes in TCAI-related genes. The analysis of vertebrate genomes provides evidence that a "big bang" of adaptive immune genes occurred 300-500 million years ago. These processes together suggest an early genetic construction of the vertebrate immune system and subsequent molecular adaptation to diverse antigens. 

Abstract Adaptive radiations are characterised by the diversification and ecological differentiation of species, and replicated cases of this process provide natural experiments for understanding the repeatability and pace of molecular evolution. During adaptive radiation, genes related to ecological specialisation may be subject to recurrent positive directional selection. However, it is not clear to what extent patterns of lineage-specific ecological specialisation (including phenotypic convergence) are correlated with shared signatures of molecular evolution. To test this, we sequenced whole exomes from a phylogenetically dispersed sample of 38 murine rodent species, a group characterised by multiple, nested adaptive radiations comprising extensive ecological and phenotypic diversity. We found that genes associated with immunity, reproduction, diet, digestion and taste have been subject to pervasive positive selection during the diversification of murine rodents. We also found a significant correlation between genome-wide positive selection and dietary specialisation, with a higher proportion of positively selected codon sites in derived dietary forms (i.e. carnivores and herbivores) than in ancestral forms (i.e. omnivores). Despite striking convergent evolution of skull morphology and dentition in two distantly related worm-eating specialists, we did not detect more genes with shared signatures of positive or relaxed selection than in a non-convergent species comparison. While a small number of the genes we detected can be incidentally linked to craniofacial morphology or diet, protein-coding regions are unlikely to be the primary genetic basis of this complex convergent phenotype. Our results suggest a link between positive selection and derived ecological phenotypes, and highlight specific genes and general functional categories that may have played an integral role in the extensive and rapid diversification of murine rodents.