title: Independent origin of the growth hormone gene family in New World monkeys and Old World monkeys/hominoids.
abstract: The growth hormone (GH) gene family represents an erratic and complex evolutionary pattern, involving many evolutionary events, such as multiple gene duplications, positive selection, the birth-and-death process and gene conversions. In the present study, we cloned and sequenced GH-like genes from three species of New World monkeys (NWM). Phylogenetic analysis strongly suggest monophyly for NWM GH-like genes with respect to those of Old World monkeys (OWM) and hominoids, indicating that independent gene duplications have occurred in NWM GH-like genes. There are three main clusters of genes in putatively functional NWM GH-like genes, according to our gene tree. Comparison of the ratios of nonsynonymous and synonymous substitutions revealed that these three clusters of genes evolved under different kinds of selective pressures. Detailed analysis of the evolution of pseudogenes showed that the evolutionary pattern of this gene family in platyrrhines is in agreement with the so-called birth-and-death process.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Molecular Evolution and Genome Diversity, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China.
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Chun
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Xiao-Ju
authors.initials: XJ
authors.lastname: Zou
authors.forename: Rui
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.forename: Yuan-Ying
authors.initials: YY
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.forename: Ya-Ping
authors.initials: YP
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D002520:Cercopithecidae; D005785:Gene Conversion; D020440:Gene Duplication; D013006:Growth Hormone / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D005810:Multigene Family; D010802:Phylogeny; D051078:Platyrrhini
chemical_list: D013006:Growth Hormone