Abstract
The centromere protein A (CENP-A), a histone H3-like protein, provides an essential role for chromosomal segregation during mitosis and meiosis. In this study we identified ten new CENP-A-like genes (excluding the original CENP-A gene) in cow by searching its genome database, while all other examined mammals contained only a single copy of the CENP-A gene. Phylogenetic analysis shows that the expansion of these genes occurred before the divergence of cow and sheep but after the artiodactyls diverged from other mammals. Our analyses also indicate that multiple gene duplication and intron loss events have occurred during the formation of this gene family, and the high similarity in intron sequences between the new genes and the old one suggests very recent gene expansion events. Furthermore, evidence from the comparisons of the synonymous and nonsynonymous substitutions and the distributions of the mutation sites suggested that the CENP-A-L-1 gene, a potentially functional member of cow CENP-A gene family, evolved under positive selection.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant No. 30600066) and the “Light in Western China” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for YL, and the NSFC (Grant Nos. 30021004, 30470939, 30024004, and 30623007) for JFH. The authors thank Mr. Nelson Ting from the City University of New York and Jing Luo from the Yunnan University for editing the manuscript.
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Li, Y., Huang, JF. Identification and molecular evolution of cow CENP-A gene family. Mamm Genome 19, 139–143 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00335-007-9083-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00335-007-9083-8