Nucleic Acids Research, 2002, Vol. 30, No. 8 1751-1756
© 2002 Oxford University Press
Genes on human chromosome 19 show extreme divergence from the mouse orthologs and a high GC content
European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Biocomputing Unit, Meyerhofstrasse 1, D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany
Mutational rates are known to be variable along the mammalian genome but the extent of this non-random fluctuation and their causes are less well understood. Using 5509 human and mouse orthologous genes with known chromosome positions, it is shown here that there are extreme differences in synonymous evolutionary rates between different human chromosomes when distances are measured using maximum-likelihood techniques. In particular, the average synonymous rate of genes located in human chromosome 19 is extremely high (Ks = 1.243 substitutions/site) compared with the average of all genes (Ks = 0.729), and significantly different from all other human chromosomes. When genes are sorted according to mouse chromosomes no such large differences are found. Strikingly, almost all genes of human chromosome 19 have very high GC content in humans but not in the mouse orthologs. More generally, correlation analysis shows that genes with very high GC content in humans have experienced the highest synonymous divergencies from the mouse. It is likely that, in such genes, the known relaxation of the isochore structure in rodents has caused an increased accumulation of synonymous substitutions in the mouse lineage, whereas the regions with the highest GC content in the human genome are accordingly maintained by a strong selective pressure.
* Correspondence should be addressed to present address: Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Dr. Aiguader 80, E-08003 Barcelona, Spain. Tel: +34 93 542 2901; Fax: +34 93 542 2802; Email: jose.castresana{at}crg.es
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  R. J. Britten Almost all human genes resulted from ancient duplication PNAS, December 12, 2006; 103(50): 19027 - 19032. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 N. Takahashi and H. Nakashima Negative Correlation of G+C Content at Silent Substitution Sites Between Orthologous Human and Mouse Protein-Coding Sequences DNA Res, January 1, 2006; 13(4): 135 - 140. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 M. M. Alba and J. Castresana Inverse Relationship Between Evolutionary Rate and Age of Mammalian Genes Mol. Biol. Evol., March 1, 2005; 22(3): 598 - 606. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 A. Y. Ogurtsov, S. Sunyaev, and A. S. Kondrashov Indel-Based Evolutionary Distance and Mouse-Human Divergence Genome Res., August 1, 2004; 14(8): 1610 - 1616. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
M. J. Lercher, J.-V. Chamary, and L. D. Hurst Genomic Regionality in Rates of Evolution Is Not Explained by Clustering of Genes of Comparable Expression Profile Genome Res., June 1, 2004; 14(6): 1002 - 1013. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
K. D. Makova, S. Yang, and F. Chiaromonte Insertions and Deletions Are Male Biased Too: A Whole-Genome Analysis in Rodents Genome Res., April 1, 2004; 14(4): 567 - 573. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 A. Navarro and N. H. Barton Chromosomal Speciation and Molecular Divergence--Accelerated Evolution in Rearranged Chromosomes Science, April 11, 2003; 300(5617): 321 - 324. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
R. C. Hardison, K. M. Roskin, S. Yang, M. Diekhans, W. J. Kent, R. Weber, L. Elnitski, J. Li, M. O'Connor, D. Kolbe, et al. Covariation in Frequencies of Substitution, Deletion, Transposition, and Recombination During Eutherian Evolution Genome Res., January 1, 2003; 13(1): 13 - 26. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|