Recent duplication and positive selection of the GAGE gene family.

Autor: Yang Liu, Qiyun Zhu, Naishuo Zhu
Zdroj: Genetica; May2008, Vol. 133 Issue 1, p31-35, 5p
Abstrakt: Abstract  We report that the GAGE gene family of human Cancer/testis antigen (CTA) genes is likely to be in an early stage of its evolution. Members of this gene family are tandemly arranged on the X chromosome only in human, chimpanzee and macaque genomes and share a very high similarity. Phylogenetic trees show that the GAGE gene family began to duplicate after the split of human and chimpanzee. The estimated ages of the duplication events range from 4 million years ago to the present. The Ka/Ks values between the duplicates are significantly greater than 1, indicating that the mutation rate is higher in coding regions than non-coding regions of the genes, which suggests that the GAGE gene family is under positive selection. These findings indicate that the GAGE gene family may be a newly formed gene family undergoing rapid functional evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Databáze: Complementary Index
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