0000000000587224
AUTHOR
Mariano Rocchi
CYP3 phylogenomics: evidence for positive selection of CYP3A4 and CYP3A7.
CYP3A metabolizes 50% of currently prescribed drugs and is frequently involved in clinically relevant drug interactions. The understanding of roles and regulations of the individual CYP3A genes in pharmacology and physiology is incomplete.Using genomic sequences from 16 species we investigated the evolution of CYP3 genomic loci over a period of 450 million years.CYP3A genes in amniota evolved from two ancestral CYP3A genes. Upon the emergence of eutherian mammals, one of them was lost, whereas, the other acquired a novel genomic environment owing to translocation. In primates, CYP3A underwent rapid evolutionary changes involving multiple gene duplications, deletions, pseudogenizations, and …
Eight million years of maintained heterozygosity in chromosome homologs of cercopithecine monkeys
In the Cercopithecini ancestor two chromosomes, homologous to human chromosomes 20 and 21, fused to form the Cercopithecini specific 20/21 association. In some individuals from the genus Cercopithecus, this association was shown to be polymorphic for the position of the centromere, suggesting centromere repositioning events. We set out to test this hypothesis by defining the evolutionary history of the 20/21 association in four Cercopithecini species from three different genera. The marker order of the various 20/21 associations was established using molecular cytogenetic techniques, including an array of more than 100 BACs. We discovered that five different forms of the 20/21 association w…