Evolution of three parent genes and their retrogene copies in Drosophila species.

ABSTRACT: Retrogenes form a class of gene duplicate lacking the regulatory sequences found outside of the mRNA-coding regions of the parent gene. It is not clear how a retrogene's lack of parental regulatory sequences affects the evolution of the gene pair. To explore the evolution of parent genes and retrogenes, we investigated three such gene pairs in the family Drosophilidae; in Drosophila melanogaster, these gene pairs are CG8331 and CG4960, CG17734 and CG11825, and Sep2 and Sep5. We investigated the embryonic expression patterns of these gene pairs across multiple Drosophila species. Expression patterns of the parent genes and their single copy orthologs are relatively conserved across species, whether or not a species has a retrogene copy, although there is some variation in CG8331 and CG17734

SUBMITTER: O'Neill RS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3690201 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature