Positive selection on protein-length in the evolution of a primate sperm ion channel.

ABSTRACT: Positive Darwinian selection on advantageous point substitutions has been demonstrated in many genes. We here provide empirical evidence, for the first time, that positive selection can also act on insertion/deletion (indel) substitutions in the evolution of a protein. CATSPER1 is a voltage-gated calcium channel found exclusively in the plasma membrane of the mammalian sperm tail and it is essential for sperm motility. We determined the DNA sequences of the first exon of the CATSPER1 gene from 15 primates, which encodes the intracellular N terminus region of approximately equal to 400 aa. These sequences exhibit an excessively high frequency of indels. However, all indels have lengths that are multiples of 3 nt (3n indels) and do not disrupt the ORF. The number of indel substitutions per s

SUBMITTER: Podlaha O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC218743 | biostudies-literature | 2003 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature