Human evolution: Gradual or Punctuated? Accelerated integration of mtDNA pseudogenes into the nuclear genome coincides with speciation of the human genus. A Hypothesis
نویسندگان
چکیده
Poster The question: human evolution gradual process or a rapid discontinuous change? Whether human origin was a gradual process or was a result of rapid change has been a focus of intense debate. Of particular interest has been the mid-Pliocene climate change event ~2.9-2.5 Ma, which is thought to have precipitated the separation of the genus Homo as an independent lineage, i.e. separation of Humans from non-Humans (~2.8Ma). The debate mostly concerned continuity/punctuality of the fossil record, but of course the rate of the underlying genetic change is of ultimate interest/importance. Did hominid lineage experience an increased mutation rate when a large number of hominins emerged and eventually gave rise to the split between Australopitecus/Paranthropus and Homo??
منابع مشابه
Integration of mtDNA pseudogenes into the nuclear genome coincides with speciation of the human genus. A hypothesis.
Fragments of mitochondrial DNA are known to get inserted into nuclear DNA to form NUMTs, i.e. nuclear pseudogenes of the mtDNA. The insertion of a NUMT is a rare event. Hundreds of pseudogenes have been cataloged in the human genome. NUMTs are, in essence, a special type of mutation with their own internal timer, which is synchronized with an established molecular clock, the mtDNA. Thus inserti...
متن کاملData on the time of integration of the human mitochondrial pseudogenes (NUMTs) into the nuclear genome
The data and methods presented in this article are supplementing the research article "Integration of mtDNA pseudogenes into the nuclear genome coincides with speciation of the human genus. A hypothesis", DOI: 10.1016/j.mito.2016.12.001 (Gunbin et al., 2017) [1]. Mitochondrial DNA is known to get inserted into nuclear DNA to form NUMTs, i.e. nuclear DNA pseudogenes of the mtDNA. We present here...
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Here we show that multiple DNA sequences, similar to the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene, occur within single individuals in at least 10 species of the snapping shrimp genus Alpheus. Cloning of amplified products revealed the presence of copies that differed in length and (more frequently) in base substitutions. Although multiple copies were amplified in individual shrimp from tot...
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Mitochondrial pseudogenes in the human nuclear genome have been previously described, mostly as a source of artifacts during the analysis of the mitochondrial genome. With the availability of the complete human genome sequence, we performed a comprehensive analysis of mtDNA insertions into the nucleus. We found 612 independent integrations that are evenly distributed among all chromosomes as we...
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The hypothesis that the evolution of humans involved hybridization between diverged species has been actively debated in recent years. We present novel evidence in support of this hypothesis: the analysis of nuclear pseudogenes of mtDNA (“NUMTs”). NUMTs are considered “mtDNA fossils”, as they preserve sequences of ancient mtDNA and thus carry unique information about ancestral populations. Our ...
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