Abstract
Pseudogenes have classically been considered inactive sequences evolving under neutrality. In recent years, however, a growing body of evidence is favoring the appearance of hypotheses attributing a functional role to pseudogenes. One of these hypotheses is that the silencing of a gene could produce a loss of function that could have been favored by natural selection. Here, we analyzed the pace of pseudogenization of arpAT, an L-DOPA transporter related to the neurotransmitter function of this amino acid in the brain. While active in rodent, dog, and chicken, arpAT has been silenced during primate evolution. Given the high number of inactivating mutations described in humans, it is possible that there have been selective pressures favoring this silencing. Through analysis of orthologous sequences in several primate species, we show that the silencing of arpAT occurred ∼77 million to 90 million years ago, and that the observed mutation pattern is likely a consequence of its antiquity.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to C. Roos, Gene Bank of Primates (German Primate Center), for kindly providing us the prosimian DNA samples. Tomàs Marquès (Washington University, USA) helped with the use of PAML. This research was supported by the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia of Spain (Grants SAF2007–63171, BFU2005–00243, and BFU2006–14600) and EC Project Grant 502802 EUGINDAT. We also thank the Servei de Genòmica (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) for technical support. D. Torrents is an ICREA Research Professor.
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Casals, F., Ferrer-Admetlla, A., Chillarón, J. et al. Is There Selection for the Pace of Successive Inactivation of the arpAT Gene in Primates?. J Mol Evol 67, 23–28 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-008-9120-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-008-9120-6