title: The involucrin gene of Old-World monkeys and other higher primates: synapomorphies and parallelisms resulting from the same gene-altering mechanism.
abstract: The involucrin gene of platyrrhines and hominoids contains a segment of 10-codon repeats which were added vectorially at the same site in the coding region. We have now cloned and sequenced the involucrin gene of four cercopithecoid monkeys--two macaques (mulatta and fascicularis) and two Cercopithecus monkeys (aethiops and hamlyni). Each gene contains a similar segment of short repeats; some of these were added in a common anthropoid lineage, others were added in a common catarrhine lineage, and still others were added in a common macaque or Cercopithecus lineage. Repeats added before a lineage diverges become synapomorphies in the sister taxa resulting from the divergence. Repeats added independently in different diverged lineages become parallelisms. The synapomorphies are the result of the action of a targeted duplication mechanism acting in a common ancestral lineage, but the parallelisms are the result of the same duplication mechanism transmitted to successively divergent sublineages and acting independently in each.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Djian
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Green
mesh_terms: D000483:Alleles; D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D005075:Biological Evolution; D002520:Cercopithecidae / Q000235:genetics*; D004247:DNA; D005091:Exons; D006801:Humans; D008252:Macaca fascicularis / Q000235:genetics; D008253:Macaca mulatta / Q000235:genetics; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009154:Mutation; D011323:Primates / Q000235:genetics*; D011498:Protein Precursors / Q000235:genetics*; D012091:Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid; D015183:Restriction Mapping; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid
chemical_list: D011498:Protein Precursors; C032253:involucrin; D004247:DNA