Evolution of the CYP2D gene cluster in humans and four non-human primates

The human cytochrome P450 2D6 (CYP2D6) is a primary enzyme involved in the metabolism of about 25% of commonly used therapeutic drugs. CYP2D6 belongs to the CYP2D subfamily, a gene cluster located on chromosome 22, which comprises the CYP2D6 gene and pseudogenes CYP2D7P and CYP2D8P. Although the chemical and physiological properties of CYP2D6 have been extensively studied, there has been no study to date on molecular evolution of the CYP2D subfamily in the human genome. Such knowledge could greatly contribute to the understanding of drug metabolism in humans because it makes us to know when and how the current metabolic system has been constructed. The knowledge moreover can be useful to find differences in exogenous substrates in a particular metabolism between human and other animals such as experimental animals. Here, we conducted a preliminary study to investigate the evolution and gene organization of the CYP2D subfamily, focused on humans and four non-human primates (chimpanzees, orangutans, rhesus monkeys, and common marmosets). Our results indicate that CYP2D7P has been duplicated from CYP2D6 before the divergence between humans and great apes, whereas CYP2D6 and CYP2D8P have been already present in the stem lineages of New World monkeys and Catarrhini. Furthermore, the origin of the CYP2D subfamily in the human genome can be traced back to before the divergence between amniotes and amphibians. Our analyses also show that reported chimeric sequences of the CYP2D6 and CYP2D7 genes in the chimpanzee genome appear to be exchanged in its genome database.