| Title: | Proteomic and UTR analyses of a rapidly evolving hypervariable family of vertebrate pheromones |
| Author(s): | Wilburn DB; Bowen KE; Gregg RG; Cai J; Feldhoff PW; Houck LD; Feldhoff RC; |
| Address: | "Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Louisville Health Sciences Center, Louisville, Kentucky 40292, USA" |
| DOI: | 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2011.01572.x |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1558-5646 (Electronic) 0014-3820 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "During the annual mating season, the mental gland of male plethodontid salamanders diverts its protein synthesizing capacity to the production of courtship pheromones that increase female receptivity. Plethodontid modulating factor (PMF), a highly disulfide-bonded 7-kDa pheromone, shows unusual hypervariability with each male expressing >30 isoforms. Twenty-eight PMFs were purified and matched by proteomic analyses to cDNA sequences. In contrast to coding sequence hypervariability, the untranslated regions (UTRs) show extraordinary conservation, no predicted microRNA binding sites, and an overlapping triplet polyadenylation signal. Full-length cDNA sequencing revealed three PMF gene classes containing subclasses of clustered sequences that support >/= 13 PMF gene duplications. The unusual phenomena of hypervariable coding regions embedded within extremely conserved UTRs is proposed to occur by a disjunctive evolutionary process. During the short courtship season, the UTRs are hypothesized to subsume and coordinate the transcriptional and translational regulatory mechanisms of the mental gland. PMF, as a secreted protein with limited metabolic feedback in the male, is under minimal mutational restraint and thus has experienced highly accelerated rates of evolution. Consequently, plethodontid salamanders may provide a unique model for furthering our understanding of the selective forces that determine differential rates of gene duplication and evolution in protein families" |
| Keywords: | "Animals Courtship DNA, Complementary/genetics *Evolution, Molecular Female Male Molecular Sequence Data North Carolina Open Reading Frames Pheromones/chemistry/*genetics Sequence Analysis, DNA Sequence Analysis, Protein Sexual Behavior, Animal Untranslate;" |
| Notes: | "MedlineWilburn, Damien B Bowen, Kathleen E Gregg, Ronald G Cai, Jian Feldhoff, Pamela W Houck, Lynne D Feldhoff, Richard C eng Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. 2012/07/05 Evolution. 2012 Jul; 66(7):2227-39. doi: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2011.01572.x. Epub 2012 Feb 17" |
