Département de biologie et Centre de recherche avancée en génomique environnementale, Université d'Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Genome. 2012 Feb;55(2):147-51. doi: 10.1139/g2012-002. Epub 2012 Feb 6.
The abundance of processed pseudogenes in different vertebrate species is known to be proportional to the length of their oogenesis. However, this hypothesis cannot explain why, in a given species, certain genes produce more processed pseudogenes than others. In particular, one would expect that all genes of the glycolytic pathway would generate roughly the same number of processed pseudogenes. However, some glycolitic genes generate more processed pseudogenes than others. Here, we show that there is a positive correlation between the abundance of processed pseudogene generated from glycolytic genes and their level of expression. The variation in expression level of different glycolytic genes likely reflects the fact that some of them, such a GAPDH, have functions other than those they play in glycolysis. Furthermore, the age distribution of GAPDH-processed pseudogenes corresponds to the age distribution of LINE1 elements, which are the source of the reverse transcriptase that generates processed pseudogenes. These results support the hypothesis that gene expression levels affect the level of processed pseudogene production.
不同脊椎动物物种中加工假基因的丰度与它们的卵发生长度成正比是已知的。然而，这一假说并不能解释为什么在给定的物种中，某些基因产生的加工假基因比其他基因多。特别是，人们可能会期望糖酵解途径的所有基因都会产生大致相同数量的加工假基因。然而，一些糖酵解基因产生的加工假基因比其他基因多。在这里，我们表明，从糖酵解基因产生的加工假基因的丰度与它们的表达水平之间存在正相关关系。不同糖酵解基因表达水平的变化可能反映了这样一个事实，即其中一些基因，如 GAPDH，除了在糖酵解中发挥作用外，还有其他功能。此外，GAPDH 加工假基因的年龄分布与 LINE1 元素的年龄分布相对应，LINE1 元素是产生加工假基因的逆转录酶的来源。这些结果支持了这样一种假设，即基因表达水平影响加工假基因产生的水平。
