Different noses for different people.
Of more than 1,000 human olfactory receptor genes, more than half seem to be pseudogenes. We investigated whether the most recent of these disruptions might still segregate with the intact form by genotyping 51 candidate genes in 189 ethnically diverse humans. The results show an unprecedented prevalence of segregating pseudogenes, identifying one of the most pronounced cases of functional population diversity in the human genome.
Department of Molecular Genetics and the Crown Human Genome Center, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
Idan
I
Menashe
Orna
O
Man
Doron
D
Lancet
Yoav
Y
Gilad
D000818:Animals; D044383:Black People / Q000235:genetics; D015894:Genome, Human; D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D005810:Multigene Family; D002679:Pan troglodytes / Q000235:genetics; D010641:Phenotype; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D011544:Pseudogenes; D018035:Receptors, Odorant / Q000235:genetics*
D018035:Receptors, Odorant