Identification of a heat-shock pseudogene from Caenorhabditis elegans.
While characterizing the hsp70 gene family from Caenorhabditis elegans we encountered an unusual member of this family. Sequence data reveal that the hsp-2ps gene is a pseudogene of the constitutively expressed, heat-inducible hsp-1 gene. Two stop codons generated near the 5' end of the sequence as well as several frameshift mutations and a large internal deletion confirm the identification of hsp-2ps as a pseudogene. The nucleotide substitution rate of the third codon position was twice that of the first and second codon positions, suggesting that the hsp-2ps gene was nonfunctional since the time of the duplication event. The hsp-2ps gene duplicates a region of the hsp-1 gene that lies exclusively within the transcribed region and retains the introns. We feel that the hsp-2ps gene was produced by a transpositional duplication event, which occurred approximately 8.5 million years ago.
Heschl
M F
MF
Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada.
Baillie
D L
DL
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D005075:Biological Evolution; D002107:Caenorhabditis / Q000235:genetics*; D006360:Heat-Shock Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011544:Pseudogenes; D015183:Restriction Mapping
D006360:Heat-Shock Proteins