MBE Advance Access originally published online on July 28, 2004
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2004 21(11):2111-2115; doi:10.1093/molbev/msh220
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Research Article |
Recent Origin of a Hominoid-Specific Splice Form of Neuropsin, a Gene Involved in Learning and Memory
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* Key Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan, China; Center for Genome Information, Department of Environmental Health, University of Cincinnati; Department of Chemistry, Qujing Teachers University, Qujing, Yunnan, China; Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; ||The First People's Hospital of Qujing, Qujing, Yunnan, China; and ¶ The First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical College, Kunming, Yunnan, China
E-mail: sub{at}mail.kiz.ac.cn.
Neuropsin is a secreted-type serine protease involved in learning and memory. The type II splice form of neuropsin is abundantly expressed in the human brain but not in the mouse brain. We sequenced the type II–spliced region of neuropsin gene in humans and representative nonhuman primate species. Our comparative sequence analysis showed that only the hominoid species (humans and apes) have the intact open reading frame of the type II splice form, indicating that the type II neuropsin originated recently in the primate lineage about 18 MYA. Expression analysis using RT-PCR detected abundant expression of the type II form in the frontal lobe of the adult human brain, but no expression was detected in the brains of lesser apes and Old World monkeys, indicating that the type II form of neuropsin only became functional in recent time, and it might contribute to the progressive change of cognitive abilities during primate evolution.
Key Words: neuropsin • hominoid • alternative splicing • cognition • molecular evolution