ArticlePLoS genetics2009
Molecular decay of the tooth gene Enamelin (ENAM) mirrors the loss of enamel in the fossil record of placental mammals.
Article in PLoS genetics, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 76 papers.
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76 citing papers in PubMed, 169 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Reduction of Tooth Replacement Disproportionately Affects the Evolution of Enamel Matrix Proteins.Journal of molecular evolution · 2025Article
- Illuminating the mystery of thylacine extinction: a role for relaxed selection and gene loss.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- A Splicing Mutation in mitfa is Involved in the Depigmentation of Cavefish Triplophysa rosa.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Promising potential effects of resveratrol on oral and dental health maintenance: a comprehensive review.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2025Review
- Gene Loss DB: a curated database for gene loss in mammals-the cetacean collection.Database : the journal of biological databases and curation · 2025Article
- Unearthing the secrets of Australia's most enigmatic and cryptic mammal, the marsupial mole.Science advances · 2025Article
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- Emergence of saliva protein genes in the secretory calcium-binding phosphoprotein (SCPP) locus and accelerated evolution in primates.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
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- From teeth to pad: tooth loss and development of keratinous structures in sirenians.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Three Blind Moles: Molecular Evolutionary Insights on the Tempo and Mode of Convergent Eye Degeneration inGenes · 2023Article
- Pseudogenization of the Hair-Related Genes PADI3 and S100A3 in Cetaceans and Hippopotamus amphibius.Journal of molecular evolution · 2023Article
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- Flexible conservatism in the skull modularity of convergently evolved myrmecophagous placental mammals.BMC ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Pseudogenized Amelogenin Reveals Early Tooth Loss in True Toads (Anura: Bufonidae).Integrative and comparative biology · 2021Article
16 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Vestigial structures occur at both the anatomical and molecular levels, but studies documenting the co-occurrence of morphological degeneration in the fossil record and molecular decay in the genome are rare. Here, we use morphology, the fossil record, and phylogenetics to predict the occurrence of "molecular fossils" of the enamelin (ENAM) gene in four different orders of placental mammals (Tubulidentata, Pholidota, Cetacea, Xenarthra) with toothless and/or enamelless taxa. Our results support the "molecular fossil" hypothesis and demonstrate the occurrence of frameshift mutations and/or stop codons in all toothless and enamelless taxa. We then use a novel method based on selection intensity estimates for codons (omega) to calculate the timing of iterated enamel loss in the fossil record of aardvarks and pangolins, and further show that the molecular evolutionary history of ENAM predicts the occurrence of enamel in basal representatives of Xenarthra (sloths, anteaters, armadillos) even though frameshift mutations are ubiquitous in ENAM sequences of living xenarthrans. The molecular decay of ENAM parallels the morphological degeneration of enamel in the fossil record of placental mammals and provides manifest evidence for the predictive power of Darwin's theory.
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