title: Identification of large ancient duplications associated with human gene deserts.
abstract: We identified 15 regions of >1 Mb in the human genome composed of large ancient local duplications corresponding to gene deserts. We detected these intrachromosomal duplications in mouse and dog but not in chicken; they present as patches of similarity as low as 60%. These findings suggest that some human gene deserts originated from duplications of segments lacking genes in a mammalian common ancestor.
authors.affiliation: Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc., Tokyo 100-8141, Japan. takehiko@mri.co.jp
authors.forename: Takehiko
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Itoh
authors.forename: Atsushi
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Toyoda
authors.forename: Todd D
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.forename: Yoshiyuki
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sakaki
authors.forename: Masahira
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hattori
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004285:Dogs; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D020440:Gene Duplication; D020131:Genes, Duplicate / Q000235:genetics*; D015894:Genome, Human; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice