MBE Advance Access originally published online on December 29, 2005
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2006 23(4):798-806; doi:10.1093/molbev/msj088
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Research Article |
A Tandem Gene Duplication Followed by Recruitment of a Retrotransposon Created the Paralogous Bucentaur Gene (bcntp97) in the Ancestral Ruminant









* Mitsubishi Kagaku Institute of Life Sciences (MITILS), Tokyo, Japan;
Department of Environment and Natural Sciences, Yokohama National University, Kanagawa, Japan;
Hitachi Instruments Service Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan;
Department of Animal Science and Biotechnology, Azabu University, Kanagawa, Japan; || National Science Museum, Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan; ¶ Department of Veterinary Medicine, Nihon University, Kanagawa, Japan; # Department of Veterinary Anatomy, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan; ** Laboratory of Animal Morphology and Function, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan; 
Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University; and 
National Institute of Biomedical Innovation, Osaka, Japan
E-mail: siwast{at}libra.ls.m-kagaku.co.jp.
Retrotransposable element-1 (RTE-1) is a class of long interspersed nucleotide elements that contain in its open reading frame an apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease domain (AP-END) and a reverse transcriptase domain. Ruminants have a clade-specific RTE-1 (BovB/RTE). The bovine bcnt gene (bucentaur or craniofacial developmental protein 1) has a duplicated paralog (bcntp97) in tandem that recruited an AP-END of BovB/RTE as a coding exon (RTE exon). We obtained sequence of the bcnt region from several animals and showed that other ruminants also have the bcntp97 with a conserved RTE exon while camels and pigs do not. Genomic Southern analysis showed that camels and pigs have multiple bcnt-related sequences but not BovB/RTE which bovines and lesser mouse deer have abundantly. These results indicate that the bcnt gene duplication followed by the creation of bcntp97 including recruitment of the RTE exon occurred in the ancestral ruminant about 55 MYA. The indication of time frame is supported by a phylogenetic analysis. Taken together with a result of differential tissue expression of the two bcnt paralogs, we conclude that bcntp97 was created concurrently with the early radiation of BovB/RTE in an ancestral ruminant and then acquired a novel function.
Key Words: gene duplication ruminant exonization AP-endonuclease domain reverse transcriptase domain adaptive evolution
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D. L. Adelson, J. M. Raison, and R. C. Edgar Characterization and distribution of retrotransposons and simple sequence repeats in the bovine genome PNAS, August 4, 2009; 106(31): 12855 - 12860. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
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