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MBE Advance Access originally published online on December 22, 2008
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2009 26(3):491-494; doi:10.1093/molbev/msn294
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Letters

A Signature of Evolutionary Constraint on a Subset of Ectopically Expressed Olfactory Receptor Genes

Omar De la Cruz*, Ran Blekhman{dagger}, Xiaohong Zhang{ddagger}, Dan Nicolae*,§, Stuart Firestein{ddagger} and Yoav Gilad{dagger}

* Department of Statistics, University of Chicago
{dagger} Department of Human Genetics, University of Chicago
{ddagger} Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY
§ Department of Medicine, University of Chicago

E-mail: gilad{at}uchicago.edu.

Accepted for publication December 17, 2008.

Olfactory receptor (OR) genes constitute the basis for the sense of smell. It has long been observed that a subset of mammalian OR genes are expressed in nonolfactory tissues, in addition to their expression in the olfactory epithelium. However, it is unknown whether OR genes have alternative functions in the nonolfactory tissues. Using a dedicated microarray, we surveyed OR gene expression in olfactory epithelium as well as a number of nonolfactory tissues, in human and chimpanzee. Our observations suggest that ectopically expressed OR orthologous genes are expressed in the same nonolfactory tissues in human and chimpanzee more often than expected by chance alone. Moreover, we found that the subset of orthologous OR genes with conserved ectopic expression evolve under stronger evolutionary constraint than OR genes expressed exclusively in the olfactory epithelium. Thus, although we cannot provide direct functional data, our observations are consistent with the notion that a subset of ectopically expressed OR genes have additional functions in nonolfactory tissues.

Key Words: olfaction • olfactory receptors • primate evolution

Michael Nachman, Associate Editor


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