基因君官网
图片来源：medicalxpress.com
2016年1月6日 讯 /生物谷BIOON/ –新基因通常会在进化的过程中不断出现，那么是什么驱动了这一过程呢？近日一项刊登在PLoS Genetics上的研究报告中，来自西班牙加泰罗尼亚高等研究院（ICREA）等处的研究人员通过研究发现，基因组中特定元件组合的偶然出现或许会导致新型基因的产生。
在每一个基因组中都存在多套基因，其对于特殊的物种非常重要，这项研究中，科学家们首次鉴别出了对人类或黑猩猩都非常特殊且重要的成千上万个基因，随后研究人员对短尾猴机体的基因组进行筛查，发现短尾猴相对应的基因组序列中相关的元件基团明显减少了，二者这些可以被蛋白质识别的元件基团可以激活基因的表达，而该过程对于新基因的形成非常关键。
基因的重新形成通常会开始于非激活的基因组部分，而这种可能性是非常小的，本文研究表明，机体遗传物质发生正常的突变或许足以帮助解释基因形成的原因；一旦进行表达，基因就会扮演新型分子功能进化的基本物质。
最后研究者Ruiz-Orera J博士说道，这项研究中我们鉴别出了多个候选的人类蛋白，这些特殊蛋白同其它任何已知的蛋白并无相似之处，而其功能的发挥非常神秘，我们还需要后期大量的研究来阐明这些特殊蛋白的功能及作用机制。（基因宝jiyinbao.com）
本文系生物谷原创编译整理，欢迎转载！转载请注明来源并附原文链接。更多资讯请下载生物谷APP.
Origins of De Novo Genes in Human and Chimpanzee
Jorge Ruiz-Orera, Jessica Hernandez-Rodriguez, Cristina Chiva, Eduard Sabidó, Ivanela Kondova, Ronald Bontrop, Tomàs Marqués-Bonet, M.Mar Albà
The birth of new genes is an important motor of evolutionary innovation. Whereas many new genes arise by gene duplication, others originate at genomic regions that did not contain any genes or gene copies. Some of these newly expressed genes may acquire coding or non-coding functions and be preserved by natural selection. However, it is yet unclear which is the prevalence and underlying mechanisms of de novo gene emergence. In order to obtain a comprehensive view of this process, we have performed in-depth sequencing of the transcriptomes of four mammalian species—human, chimpanzee, macaque, and mouse—and subsequently compared the assembled transcripts and the corresponding syntenic genomic regions. This has resulted in the identification of over five thousand new multiexonic transcriptional events in human and/or chimpanzee that are not observed in the rest of species. Using comparative genomics, we show that the expression of these transcripts is associated with the gain of regulatory motifs upstream of the transcription start site (TSS) and of U1 snRNP sites downstream of the TSS. In general, these transcripts show little evidence of purifying selection, suggesting that many of them are not functional. However, we find signatures of selection in a subset of de novo genes which have evidence of protein translation. Taken together, the data support a model in which frequently-occurring new transcriptional events in the genome provide the raw material for the evolution of new proteins.