Sluder A E, Maina C V
Cambria Biosciences LLC, 2 Preston Court, Bedford, MA 01730, USA.
Trends Genet. 2001 Apr;17(4):206-13. doi: 10.1016/s0168-9525(01)02242-9.
Large-scale sequencing efforts are providing new perspectives on similarities and differences among species. Sequences encoding nuclear receptor (NR) transcription factors furnish one striking example of this. The three complete or nearly complete metazoan genome sequences - those of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) and the human - reveal dramatically different numbers of predicted NR genes: 270 for the nematode, 21 for the fruit fly and approximately 50 for the human. Although some classes of NRs present in insects and mammals are also represented among the nematode genes, most of the C. elegans NR sequences are distinct from those known in other phyla. Questions regarding the evolution and function of NR genes in nematodes, framed by t00e abundance and diversity of these genes in the C. elegans genome, are the focus of this article.
大规模测序工作正在为物种间的异同提供新视角。编码核受体（NR）转录因子的序列就是一个显著的例子。线虫秀丽隐杆线虫、果蝇（黑腹果蝇）和人类的三个完整或近乎完整的后生动物基因组序列显示，预测的NR基因数量差异极大：线虫有270个，果蝇有21个，人类约有50个。尽管昆虫和哺乳动物中存在的某些NR类别在线虫基因中也有体现，但秀丽隐杆线虫的大多数NR序列与其他门类中已知的序列不同。本文重点探讨由秀丽隐杆线虫基因组中这些基因的丰富性和多样性所引发的关于线虫中NR基因的进化和功能问题。
