Monotreme-specific conserved proteins derived from retroviral reverse transcriptase
Kitao, K.; Miyazawa, T.; Nakagawa, S.
Show abstract
Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) have played an essential role in the evolution of mammals. Many ERV-derived genes are reported in the therians that are involved in placental development. However, the contribution of the ERV-derived genes in monotremes, which are oviparous mammals, remains to be uncovered. Here, we conducted a comprehensive search for possible ERV-derived genes in platypus and echidna genomes and identified three reverse transcriptase-like genes named RTOM1, 2, and 3. They were found to be clustered in the GRIP2 intron. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that RTOM1, 2, and 3 are strongly conserved between these species, and they were generated by tandem duplications before the divergence of platypus and echidna. The RTOM transcripts were specifically expressed in the testis, suggesting the physiological importance of RTOM genes. This is the first study reporting monotreme-specific de novo gene candidates derived from ERVs, which provides new insights into the unique evolution of monotremes.
Matching journals
The top 5 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.
Similar papers in this journal
Similar papers in this journal
- De Novo Whole Genome Assembly of the Roborovski Dwarf Hamster (Phodopus roborovskii) Genome, an Animal Model for Severe/Critical COVID-19 91%
- Novel high-quality amoeba genomes reveal widespread codon usage mismatch between giant viruses and their hosts 91%
- New environment, new invaders - repeated horizontal transfer of LINEs to sea snakes 90%
Similar papers in this journal
"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.