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MBE Advance Access published online on July 28, 2004
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msh220
Molecular Biology and Evolution © Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution 2004; all rights reserved
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Accepted July 19, 2004

Original Article

Recent origin of a hominoid specific splice form of neuropsin, a gene involved in learning and memory

Yi Li 1, Ya-ping Qian 2, Xiao-jing Yu 3, Yin-qiu Wang 3, Ding-gui Dong 4, Wei Sun 4, Run-mei Ma 5, Bing Su 6*

1 Key Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan, China; Department of Chemistry, Qujing Teachers University, Qujing, Yunnan, China; Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
2 Center for Genome Information, Department of Environmental Health, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA
3 Key Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan, China
4 The First People's Hospital of Qujing, Qujing, Yunnan, China
5 The First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical College, Kunming, Yunnan, China
6 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, Cincinnati, OH, USA

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: sub{at}mail.kiz.ac.cn or bing.su@uc.edu.


  Abstract

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 million years ago. 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.

Keywords: neuropsin; hominoid; alternative splicing; cognition; molecular evolution.
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