MBE Advance Access published online on August 17, 2006
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msl090
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1 Department of Biology, University of Texas at Arlington
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. This is the first detailed study of the evolution, phylogenetic distribution and transcription of one young retroposed gene, CG13732, and its parental gene CG15645, whose functions are unknown. CG13732 is a recognizable retroposed copy of CG15645 retaining the signals of this process. We name the parental gene Cervantes and the retrogene Quijote. To determine when this duplication occurred and the phylogenetic distribution of Quijote we employed PCR, Southern blotting and the available information on sequenced Drosophila genomes. Interestingly, these analyses revealed that Quijote is present only in 4 species of Drosophila (D. melanogaster, D. simulans, D. sechellia and D. mauritiana) and that retroposed copies of Cervantes have also originated in the lineages leading to D. yakuba and D. erecta independently in the three instances. We name the new retrogene in the D. yakuba lineage Rocinante and the new retrogene in the D. erecta lineage Sancho. In this work we present data on Quijote and its parental gene Cervantes. Polymorphism analysis of the derived gene and divergence data for both parental and derived genes were used to determine that both genes likely produce functional proteins and that they are changing at a fast rate (KA/KS
Accepted August 14, 2006
Research Article
Fast Protein Evolution and Germline Expression of a Drosophila Parental Gene and Its Young Retroposed Paralog
Esther Betrán 1 *, Yongsheng Bai 1, and Mansi Motiwale 1
Esther Betrán, E-mail: betran{at}uta.edu
Abstract 
0.38). The negative value of Fay and Wu's H in the non-African sample reveals an excess of derived variants at high frequency. This could be explained either by positive selection in the region or by demographic effects. The comparative expression pattern shows that both genes express in the same adult tissues (male and female germline) in D. melanogaster. Quijote is also expressed in male and female in D. simulans, D. sechellia and D. mauritiana. We argue that the fast rate of evolution of these genes could be related to their putative germline function and are further studying the independent recruitment of Cervantes-derived retrogenes in multiple lineages.
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