Recent duplication and positive selection of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">GAGE</Emphasis> gene family |
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Authors: | Yang Liu Qiyun Zhu Naishuo Zhu |
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Institution: | (1) Laboratory of Molecular Immunology, State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering, School of Life Science, Fudan University, Handan Road 220, Shanghai, 200433, P.R. China |
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Abstract: | We report that the GAGE gene family of human Cancer/testis antigen (CTA) genes is likely to be in an early stage of its evolution. Members of this
gene family are tandemly arranged on the X chromosome only in human, chimpanzee and macaque genomes and share a very high
similarity. Phylogenetic trees show that the GAGE gene family began to duplicate after the split of human and chimpanzee. The estimated ages of the duplication events range
from 4 million years ago to the present. The Ka/Ks values between the duplicates are significantly greater than 1, indicating
that the mutation rate is higher in coding regions than non-coding regions of the genes, which suggests that the GAGE gene family is under positive selection. These findings indicate that the GAGE gene family may be a newly formed gene family undergoing rapid functional evolution.
Yang Liu and Qiyun Zhu contributed equally to this work. |
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Keywords: | GAGE Primate Duplication Positive selection |
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