title: Identification of tammar wallaby SIRH12, derived from a marsupial-specific retrotransposition event.
abstract: In humans and mice, there are 11 genes derived from sushi-ichi related retrotransposons, some of which are known to play essential roles in placental development. Interestingly, this family of retrotransposons was thought to exist only in eutherian mammals, indicating their significant contributions to the eutherian evolution, but at least one, PEG10, is conserved between marsupials and eutherians. Here we report a novel sushi-ichi retrotransposon-derived gene, SIRH12, in the tammar wallaby, an Australian marsupial species of the kangaroo family. SIRH12 encodes a protein highly homologous to the sushi-ichi retrotransposon Gag protein in the tammar wallaby, while SIRH12 in the South American short-tailed grey opossum is a pseudogene degenerated by accumulation of multiple nonsense mutations. This suggests that SIRH12 retrotransposition occurred only in the marsupial lineage but acquired and retained some as yet unidentified novel function, at least in the lineage of the tammar wallaby.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epigenetics, Medical Research Institute, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Yushima, Bunkyo-ku, Japan.
authors.forename: Ryuichi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ono
authors.forename: Yoko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kuroki
authors.forename: Mie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Naruse
authors.forename: Masayuki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ishii
authors.forename: Sawa
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Iwasaki
authors.forename: Atsushi
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Toyoda
authors.forename: Asao
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fujiyama
authors.forename: Geoff
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Shaw
authors.forename: Marilyn B
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Renfree
authors.forename: Tomoko
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kaneko-Ishino
authors.forename: Fumitoshi
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ishino
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D055028:Comparative Genomic Hybridization; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D015750:Genes, gag; D007614:Macropodidae / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D018626:Retroelements / Q000235:genetics*; D016415:Sequence Alignment
chemical_list: D018626:Retroelements