State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China.
J Genet Genomics. 2010 Dec;37(12):771-8. doi: 10.1016/S1673-8527(09)60094-1.
Formyl peptide receptors (FPRs) were observed to expand in rodents and were recently suggested as candidate vomeronasal chemosensory receptors. Since vomeronasal chemosensory receptors usually underwent positive selection and evolved concordantly with the vomeronasal organ (VNO) morphology, we surveyed FPRs in primates in which VNO morphology is greatly diverse and thus it would provide us a clearer view of VNO-FPRs evolution. By screening available primate genome sequences, we obtained the FPR repertoires in representative primate species. As a result, we did not find FPR family size expansion in primates. Further analyses showed no evolutionary force variance between primates with or without VNO structure, which indicated that there was no functional divergence among primates FPRs. Our results suggest that primates lack the VNO-specific FPRs and the FPR expansion is not a common phenomenon in mammals outside rodent lineage, regardless of VNO complexity.
类阿片肽受体（FPRs）在啮齿动物中观察到扩张，并最近被提议作为候选的犁鼻化学感觉受体。由于犁鼻化学感觉受体通常经历正选择，并与犁鼻器（VNO）形态协同进化，我们在犁鼻器形态差异很大的灵长类动物中调查了 FPRs，这将为我们提供更清晰的 VNO-FPRs 进化视图。通过筛选现有的灵长类动物基因组序列，我们获得了代表性灵长类动物物种的 FPR 库。结果显示，我们没有发现灵长类动物 FPR 家族大小的扩张。进一步的分析表明，具有或不具有 VNO 结构的灵长类动物之间没有进化力差异，这表明灵长类动物的 FPR 之间没有功能分化。我们的研究结果表明，灵长类动物缺乏 VNO 特异性的 FPR，并且 FPR 的扩张在啮齿动物谱系之外的哺乳动物中并不是一种常见现象，而与 VNO 的复杂性无关。
