Genes lost during evolution

One of the main conclusions presented by the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium is that "hundreds of genes appear to have resulted from horizontal gene transfer from bacteria at some point in the vertebrate lineage. We noticed that a significant proportion of these human genes hav...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 2001-06, Vol.411 (6841), p.1013-1014
Main Authors: ROELOFS, Jeroen, VAN HAASTERT, Peter J. M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
adenylyl cyclase gene
Animals
Arabidopsis
Arabidopsis thaliana
Bacteria
Biological and medical sciences
Biological evolution
Caenorhabditis elegans
Dictyostelium
Drosophila melanogaster
Evolution, Molecular
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gene Deletion
Gene Transfer, Horizontal
Genes, Bacterial
Genetics of eukaryotes. Biological and molecular evolution
Genome, Human
Human Genome Project
Humans
Monoamine Oxidase - genetics
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid
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Summary:One of the main conclusions presented by the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium is that "hundreds of genes appear to have resulted from horizontal gene transfer from bacteria at some point in the vertebrate lineage. We noticed that a significant proportion of these human genes have closely related orthologues in the primitive eukaryote Dictyostelium. This observation supports independent gene loss in multiple lineages (worm, fly, yeast, plants) rather than horizontal gene transfer from bacteria. The human genome sequences revealed 113 genes that share a high degree of identity with bacterial genes, but are absent in the completely sequenced genomes of Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila melanogaster, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Arabidopsis thaliana. Do these genes represent examples of horizontal gene transfer from bacteria to the vertebrate lineage, or were they present in both prokaryotes and early eukaryotes, but subsequently lost from all non-vertebrate eukaryotic lineages? Although this latter possibility may seem unlikely, we recently identified a gene in Dictyostelium that is clearly an orthologue of these gene that encodes soluble adenylyl cyclase in bacteria and vertebrates, but has not been identified in other eukaryotes. Dictyostelium is located in the evolutionary tree between plants and the fungi/animal crown, and sequencing of its genome is approaching completion.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/35082627