ArticleGenome biology2007
Comparative genomics reveals a constant rate of origination and convergent acquisition of functional retrogenes in Drosophila.
Article in Genome biology, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 115 papers.
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Who cites it
115 citing papers in PubMed, 172 citations in OpenAlex.
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- From Genomic Fossils to Functional Elements: The Evolving Story of Pseudogenes.Advanced genetics (Hoboken, N.J.) · 2025Review
- Unveiling the functional nature of retrogenes in dinoflagellates.Open biology · 2025Article
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- Genomic exploration of retrocopies in Insect pests of plants and their role in the expansion of heat shock proteins superfamily as evolutionary targets.BMC genomics · 2024Article
- The roles of gene duplications in the dynamics of evolutionary conflicts.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Pan-cancer surveys indicate cell cycle-related roles of primate-specific genes in tumors and embryonic cerebrum.Genome biology · 2022Article
- The Chromosomal Distribution of Sex-Biased MicroRNAs in Drosophila is Nonadaptive.Genome biology and evolution · 2022Article
- Gene fusion as an important mechanism to generate new genes in the genus Oryza.Genome biology · 2022Article
- Tracing the Origin and Evolutionary Fate of Recent Gene Retrocopies in Natural Populations of the House Mouse.Molecular biology and evolution · 2022Article
- Rapid Gene Evolution in an Ancient Post-transcriptional and Translational Regulatory System Compensates for Meiotic X Chromosomal Inactivation.Molecular biology and evolution · 2022Article
- Modular Evolution of the Drosophila Metabolome.Molecular biology and evolution · 2022Article
- Delayed discovery of Hsp60 and subsequent characterization of moonlighting functions of multipleJournal of genetics · 2022Article
- Annotation of Hox cluster and Hox cofactor genes in the Asian citrus psyllid,GigaByte (Hong Kong, China) · 2022Article
- Intronic gRNAs for the Construction of Minimal Gene Drive Systems.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2022Article
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- Nuclear transport genes recurrently duplicate by means of RNA intermediates in Drosophila but not in other insects.BMC genomics · 2021Article
55 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundProcessed copies of genes (retrogenes) are duplicate genes that originated through the reverse-transcription of a host transcript and insertion in the genome. This type of gene duplication, as any other, could be a source of new genes and functions. Using whole genome sequence data for 12 Drosophila species, we dated the origin of 94 retroposition events that gave rise to candidate functional genes in D. melanogaster.
resultsBased on this analysis, we infer that functional retrogenes have emerged at a fairly constant rate of 0.5 genes per million years per lineage over the last approximately 63 million years of Drosophila evolution. The number of functional retrogenes and the rate at which they are recruited in the D. melanogaster lineage are of the same order of magnitude as those estimated in the human lineage, despite the higher deletion bias in the Drosophila genome. However, unlike primates, the rate of retroposition in Drosophila seems to be fairly constant and no burst of retroposition can be inferred from our analyses. In addition, our data also support an important role for retrogenes as a source of lineage-specific male functions, in agreement with previous hypotheses. Finally, we identified three cases of functional retrogenes in D. melanogaster that have been independently retroposed and recruited in parallel as new genes in other Drosophila lineages.
conclusionTogether, these results indicate that retroposition is a persistent mechanism and a recurrent pathway for the emergence of new genes in Drosophila.
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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.