| 1 | Origin and evolution of new exons in the rodent zinc fingerprotein 39 gene显示文摘The origin of new structures and functions is an important process in evolution. In the past decades, we have obtained some preliminary knowledge of the origin and evo- lution of new genes. However, as the basic unit of genes, the origin and evolution of exons remain unclear. Because young exons retain the footprints of origination, they can be good materials for studying origin and evolution of new exons. In this paper, we report two young exons in a zinc finger protein gene of rodents. Since they are unique sequences in mouse and rat genome and no homologous sequences were found in the orthologous genes of human and pig, the young exons might originate after the divergence of primates and rodents through exonization of intronic sequences. Strong positive selection was detected in the new exons between mouse and rat, suggesting that these exons have undergone significant functional divergence after the separation of the two species. On the other hand, population genetics data of mouse dem- onstrate that the new exons have been subject to functional constraint, indicating an important function of the new exons in mouse. Functional analyses suggest that these new exons encode a nuclear localization signal peptide, which may me- diate new ways of nuclear protein transport. To our knowl- edge, this is the first example of the origin and evolution of young exons. | PENG Lixin1,2*, ZHENG Hongkun3*, LI Xin1,2, YANG Shuang2,4, CHEN Hong1,5 & WANG Wen2 1. College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest Sci-Tech Uni- versity of Agriculture and Forestry, Yangling 712100, China 2. CAS-Max Planck Junior Scientist Group, Key Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China 3. Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 101300, China 4. Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039 China 5. Institute of Cellular and Molecular Biology, Xuzhou Normal Univer- sity, Xuzhou 221116, China Correspondence should be addressed to Wang Wen (email: wwang@ mail.kiz.ac.cn) | 2005 | Chinese Science Bulletin2005，50，11： | 3 |
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