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MBE Advance Access published online on October 20, 2004
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msi027
Molecular Biology and Evolution © Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution 2004; all rights reserved
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Accepted October 15, 2004

Research Article

Evolution of Bitter Taste Receptors in Humans and Apes

Anne Fischer 1*, Yoav Gilad 2, Orna Man 3, and Svante Pääbo 1

1 Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6 D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
2 Yale University School of Medicine, Department of Genetics, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520
3 Department of Structural Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Anne Fischer, E-mail: afischer{at}eva.mpg.de


  Abstract

Bitter taste perception is crucial for the survival of organisms since it enables them to avoid the ingestion of potentially harmful substances. Bitter taste receptors are encoded by a gene family that in humans has been shown to contain 25 putatively functional genes and 8 pseudogenes and in mouse 33 putatively functional genes and three pseudogenes. Lineage-specific expansions of bitter taste receptors have taken place in both mouse and human, but very little is known about the evolution of these receptors in primates. We report the analysis of the almost complete repertoires of bitter taste receptor genes in human, great apes, and two old world monkeys. As a group, these genes seem to be under little selective constraint compared with olfactory receptors and other genes in the studied species. However, in contrast to the olfactory receptor gene repertoire where humans have a higher proportion of pseudogenes than apes, there is no evidence that the rate of loss of bitter taste receptor genes vary among humans and apes.

Keywords: Bitter taste receptors; selective constraint; pseudogene.
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