Gene Content and Coding Diversity of the Growth Hormone of Apes.

The growth hormone (GH) has experienced a dramatic evolution in primates, becoming multigenic and diverse in anthropoids. Despite sequence information from a vast number of primate species, it has remained unclear how the multigene family was favored. We compared the structure and composition of apes' as a prerequisite to understanding their origin and possible evolutionary role. These thorough analyses of the of the chimpanzee, gorilla, and orangutan were done by resorting to previously sequenced bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) harboring them, as well as to their respective genome projects data available in GenBank. The GH of modern man, Neanderthal, gibbon, and wild boar were retrieved from GenBank. Coding regions, regulatory elements, and repetitive sequences were identified and compared among species. The of all the analyzed species are flanked by the genes (5') and (3'). In man, Neanderthal, and chimpanzee, the were integrated by five almost indistinguishable genes; however, in the former two, they rendered three different hormones, and in the latter, four different proteins were derived. Gorilla exhibited six genes, gibbon seven, and orangutan four. The sequences of the proximal promoters, enhancers, P-elements, and a control region (LCR) were highly conserved. The locus evolution might have implicated duplications of the ancestral pituitary gene () and subsequent diversification of the copies, leading to the placental single gene and the multiple genes.