Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Search research articles

Related Experiment Videos

Processed pseudogenes in Drosophila.

P Jeffs¹, M Ashburner

¹Department of Anatomy, University of Cambridge, U.K.

Proceedings. Biological Sciences

|May 22, 1991

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

"The optimization of superficial planning target volumes (PTVs) with helical tomotherapy". [JACMP, 15 (6), 2014].

Journal of applied clinical medical physics·2017

Same author

Ontologies for biologists: a community model for the annotation of genomic data.

Cold Spring Harbor symposia on quantitative biology·2004

Same author

The Gene Ontology (GO) database and informatics resource.

Nucleic acids research·2003

Same author

A methodology to migrate the gene ontology to a description logic environment using DAML+OIL.

Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing. Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing·2003

Same author

From first base: the sequence of the tip of the X chromosome of Drosophila melanogaster, a comparison of two sequencing strategies.

Genome research·2001

Same author

Information access. Building a "GenBank" of the published literature.

Science (New York, N.Y.)·2001

Same journal

Chronic limb loading results in remarkable load carriage economy in growing fowl.

Proceedings. Biological sciences·2026

Same journal

Motion-from-structure in face perception: expectations of natural face motion depend on face shape.

Proceedings. Biological sciences·2026

Same journal

Unification and generalization of models of zygote survival.

Proceedings. Biological sciences·2026

Same journal

Phenological type- and diameter-dependent effects of individual light availability and interannual climate variation on tree growth.

Proceedings. Biological sciences·2026

Same journal

Interaction range of common goods shapes Black Queen dynamics beyond the cheater-cooperator narrative.

Proceedings. Biological sciences·2026

Same journal

Stingray spine diversity reflects performance trade-offs linked to puncture and breakability.

Proceedings. Biological sciences·2026

See all related articles

Two Drosophila species have non-functional Adh gene copies (pseudogenes) that likely originated from reverse transcription. These pseudogenes show distinct base substitution patterns, suggesting evolutionary pressures on different codon positions.

Area of Science:

Evolutionary genetics
Molecular evolution
Drosophila genomics

Background:

The alcohol dehydrogenase (Adh) gene is crucial for detoxification in many organisms.
Pseudogenes, non-functional gene copies, provide insights into gene evolution and retrotransposition.
Comparative genomics of closely related species reveals evolutionary histories.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the origin and evolutionary characteristics of Adh pseudogenes in Drosophila yakuba and Drosophila teissieri.
To determine if Adh pseudogenes arose before or after the divergence of these two species.
To analyze the patterns of base substitution within Adh pseudogenes and compare them to functional Adh genes.

Main Methods:

Bioinformatic analysis of Adh gene sequences from Drosophila yakuba and Drosophila teissieri.

Related Experiment Videos

Comparative sequence alignment to identify pseudogene characteristics (e.g., intron loss).

Phylogenetic analysis to infer the evolutionary timing of pseudogene formation.

Analysis of base substitution patterns, distinguishing between degenerate and non-degenerate codon positions.

Main Results:

Adh pseudogenes were identified in both D. yakuba and D. teissieri, lacking introns and mapping to chromosome arm 3R.
The conserved location of these pseudogenes suggests a common origin prior to species divergence.
Pseudogene base substitution patterns differ significantly between sites corresponding to degenerate and non-degenerate codons of the functional Adh gene.

Conclusions:

The structure of Adh pseudogenes suggests they originated from reverse transcripts of functional Adh mRNA.
The shared ancestry of these pseudogenes indicates their formation predates the divergence of D. yakuba and D. teissieri.
Differential base substitution patterns in pseudogenes highlight potential evolutionary pressures acting on codon degeneracy even after gene inactivation.