ArticleGenome research2003
An evolutionary analysis of orphan genes in Drosophila.
Article in Genome research, 2003. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 145 papers.
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Who cites it
145 citing papers in PubMed, 264 citations in OpenAlex.
- DetectNAR genomics and bioinformatics · 2026Article
- Identification and Classification of Expressed Orphan Genes, Spurious Orphan Genes, and Conserved Genes in the Human Gut Microbiome.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Lifestyles ofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Orthologs of an essential orphan gene vary in their capacities for function and subcellular localization in Drosophila melanogaster.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Cosmopolitan Gene Families With Known Functions Are Hotspots for the Evolution of Novel Genes in Stony Corals.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Outsourcing of energetically costly amino acids at the origin of animals.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Orphan and de novo Genes in Fungi and Animals: Identification, Origins and Functions.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Review
- De Novo Genes: Current Status and Future Goals.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- De Novo Gene Emergence: Summary, Classification, and Challenges of Current Methods.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Review
- Origin and Evolution of Genes in Eukaryotes: Mechanisms, Dynamics, and Functional Implications.Genes · 2025Review
- Evolution of the essential geneProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Bacterial Amino Acid Auxotrophies Enable Energetically Costlier Proteomes.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Orphan genes are not a distinct biological entity.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2025Review
- Candidate orphan genes: Reassessing uniqueness.PloS one · 2025Article
- De Novo Genes.Annual review of genetics · 2024Review
- Fundamental Patterns of Structural Evolution Revealed by Chromosome-Length Genomes of Cactophilic Drosophila.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Are Most Human-Specific Proteins Encoded by Long Noncoding RNAs?Journal of molecular evolution · 2024Article
- Article
- An Orphan Gene Enhances Male Reproductive Success in Plutella xylostella.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Macroevolutionary dynamics of gene family gain and loss along multicellular eukaryotic lineages.Nature communications · 2024Article
85 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Orphan genes are protein-coding regions that have no recognizable homolog in distantly related species. A substantial fraction of coding regions in any genome sequenced consists of orphan genes, but the evolutionary and functional significance of orphan genes is not understood. We present a reanalysis of the Drosophila melanogaster proteome that shows that there are still between 26% and 29% of all proteins without a significant match with noninsect sequences, and that these orphans are underrepresented in genetic screens. To analyze the characteristics of orphan genes in Drosophila, we used sequence comparisons between cDNAs retrieved from two Drosophila yakuba libraries and their corresponding D. melanogaster orthologs. We find that a cDNA library from adults yields twice as many orphan genes as such a library from embryos. The orphan genes evolve on average more than three times faster than nonorphan genes, although the width of the evolutionary rate distribution is similar for the two classes. In particular, some orphan genes show very low substitution rates that are comparable to otherwise highly conserved genes. We propose a model suggesting that orphans may be involved in the evolution of adaptive traits, and that slow-evolving orphan genes may be particularly interesting candidate genes for identifying lineage-specific adaptations.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.