title: Molecular evolution of prolactin gene family in rodents.
abstract: In this study, we identified two novel members of prolactin gene family in rat by blast searches against the published genomic database. A further analysis showed that gene duplications leading to PRL gene family in rodents occurred after rodents diverged from other mammals. Major reorganization of the gene loci in rodents was largely completed before the split of rat and mouse. But PL-I and PL-II genes are the exceptions, which have clustered in a species-specific manner in the phylogenetic tree. By combining results from gene conversion testing, relative chromosomal location comparison and estimated time for gene duplication, we believe that rodent PL-1 and PL-II genes are species-specific and are the results of serial duplications which occurred after the divergence of mouse and rat. Our analysis also reveals that continual gene duplication and divergence occurred during the evolution of rodent PRL gene family.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Evolution, and Molecular Biology of Domestic Animals, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China. liying02@mail.kiz.ac.cn
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Ya-Ping
authors.initials: YP
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D051379:Mice; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009115:Muridae / Q000145:classification; D010802:Phylogeny; D011388:Prolactin / Q000235:genetics*; D051381:Rats; D012377:Rodentia / Q000145:classification; D012641:Selection, Genetic; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid
chemical_list: D011388:Prolactin