6
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      The Xist RNA gene evolved in eutherians by pseudogenization of a protein-coding gene.

      Science (New York, N.Y.)
      American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPubMed
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          The Xist noncoding RNA is the key initiator of the process of X chromosome inactivation in eutherian mammals, but its precise function and origin remain unknown. Although Xist is well conserved among eutherians, until now, no homolog has been identified in other mammals. We show here that Xist evolved, at least partly, from a protein-coding gene and that the loss of protein-coding function of the proto-Xist coincides with the four flanking protein genes becoming pseudogenes. This event occurred after the divergence between eutherians and marsupials, which suggests that mechanisms of dosage compensation have evolved independently in both lineages.

          Related collections

          Author and article information

          Journal
          16778056
          10.1126/science.1126316

          Comments

          Comment on this article

          scite_