Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
1
pubmed:dateCreated
2001-2-14
pubmed:abstractText
In addition to nine functional genes, the human type I hair keratin gene cluster contains a pseudogene, phihHaA (KRTHAP1), which is thought to have been inactivated by a single base-pair substitution that introduced a premature TGA termination codon into exon 4. Large-scale genotyping of human, chimpanzee, and gorilla DNAs revealed the homozygous presence of the phihHaA nonsense mutation in humans of different ethnic backgrounds, but its absence in the functional orthologous chimpanzee (cHaA) and gorilla (gHaA) genes. Expression analyses of the encoded cHaA and gHaA hair keratins served to highlight dramatic differences between the hair keratin phenotypes of contemporary humans and the great apes. The relative numbers of synonymous and non-synonymous substitutions in the phihHaA and cHaA genes, as inferred by using the gHaA gene as an outgroup, suggest that the human hHaA gene was inactivated only recently, viz., less than 240,000 years ago. This implies that the hair keratin phenotype of hominids prior to this date, and after the Pan-Homo divergence some 5.5 million years ago, could have been identical to that of the great apes. In addition, the homozygous presence of the phihHaA exon 4 nonsense mutation in some of the earliest branching lineages among extant human populations lends strong support to the "single African origin" hypothesis of modern humans.
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:chemical
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Jan
pubmed:issn
0340-6717
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:volume
108
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
37-42
pubmed:dateRevised
2006-11-15
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Amino Acid Sequence, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Animals, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Bacterial Proteins, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Base Sequence, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-DNA-Binding Proteins, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Escherichia coli Proteins, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Evolution, Molecular, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Gene Expression, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Gorilla gorilla, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Humans, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Keratins, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Keratins, Hair-Specific, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Keratins, Type I, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Molecular Sequence Data, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Multigene Family, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Mutation, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Pan troglodytes, pubmed-meshheading:11214905-Pseudogenes
pubmed:year
2001
pubmed:articleTitle
Human type I hair keratin pseudogene phihHaA has functional orthologs in the chimpanzee and gorilla: evidence for recent inactivation of the human gene after the Pan-Homo divergence.
pubmed:affiliation
German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany.
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't