Wang Wen, Yu Haijing, Long Manyuan
CAS-Max Planck Junior Scientist Group, Key Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan 650223, China.
Nat Genet. 2004 May;36(5):523-7. doi: 10.1038/ng1338. Epub 2004 Apr 4.
Gene fission and fusion, the processes by which a single gene is split into two separate genes and two adjacent genes are fused into a single gene, respectively, are among the primary processes that generate new genes. Despite their seeming reversibility, nothing is known about the mechanism of gene fission. Because the nucleotide sequences of fission genes record little about their origination process, conventional analysis of duplicate genes may not be powerful enough to unravel the underlying mechanism. In a survey for young genes in species of the Drosophila melanogaster subgroup using fluorescence in situ hybridization, we identified a young gene family, monkey king, whose genesis sheds light on the evolutionary process of gene fission. Its members originated 1-2 million years ago as retroposed duplicates and evolved into fission genes that separately encode protein domains from a multidomain ancestor. The mechanism underlying this process is gene duplication with subsequent partial degeneration.
基因裂变和融合，即一个单一基因分别被分割成两个独立基因以及两个相邻基因融合成一个单一基因的过程，是产生新基因的主要过程之一。尽管它们看似具有可逆性，但基因裂变的机制仍不为人所知。由于裂变基因的核苷酸序列几乎没有记录其起源过程，传统的重复基因分析可能不足以揭示其潜在机制。在一项使用荧光原位杂交对黑腹果蝇亚组物种中的年轻基因进行的调查中，我们鉴定出了一个年轻的基因家族——猴王基因家族，其起源为基因裂变的进化过程提供了线索。其成员在100万至200万年前作为反转座重复基因起源，并进化为裂变基因，这些裂变基因从一个多结构域祖先中分别编码蛋白质结构域。这一过程的潜在机制是基因重复并随后发生部分退化。
