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J Mol Evol

Title:		Adaptive diversification of vomeronasal receptor 1 genes in rodents
Author(s):		Shi P; Bielawski JP; Yang H; Zhang YP;
Address:		"Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Domestic Animals and Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology Chinese Academy of Sciences"
Journal Title:		J Mol Evol
Year:		2005
Volume:		60
Issue:		5
Page Number:		566 - 576
DOI:		10.1007/s00239-004-0172-y
ISSN/ISBN:		0022-2844 (Print) 0022-2844 (Linking)
Abstract:		"The vomeronasal receptor 1 (V1R) are believed to be pheromone receptors in rodents. Here we used computational methods to identify 95 and 62 new putative V1R genes from the draft rat and mouse genome sequence, respectively. The rat V1R repertoire consists of 11 subfamilies, 10 of which are shared with the mouse, while rat appears to lack the H and I subfamilies found in mouse and possesses one unique subfamily (M). The estimations of the relative divergence times suggest that many subfamilies originated after the split of rodents and primates. The analysis also reveals that these clusters underwent an expansion very close to the split of mouse and rat. In addition, maximum likelihood analysis showed that the nonsynonymous and synonymous rate ratio for most of these clusters was much higher than one, suggesting the role of positive selection in the diversification of these duplicated V1R genes. Because V1R are thought to mediate the process of signal transduction in response to pheromone detection, we speculate that the V1R genes have evolved under positive Darwinian selection to maintain the ability to discriminate between large and complex pheromonal mixtures"
Keywords:		"Adaptation, Physiological/genetics Animals Chemotactic Factors/*genetics Cluster Analysis Computational Biology/methods Evolution, Molecular *Genetic Variation *Genome Likelihood Functions Mice/*genetics Models, Genetic Multigene Family/genetics *Phylogen;"
Notes:		"MedlineShi, Peng Bielawski, Joseph P Yang, Hui Zhang, Ya-ping eng Comparative Study Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Germany 2005/06/29 J Mol Evol. 2005 May; 60(5):566-76. doi: 10.1007/s00239-004-0172-y"