Pseudogenes: Age

Allen R Rhoads, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington DC, USA
Felix Friedberg, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington DC, USA

Published online: May 2008

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0005119.pub2

Pseudogenes present valuable evolutionary markers since they undergo neutral evolution. Determination of the age of pseudogenes over relatively short distances of time can confirm the order of evolutionary emergence and provide evidence for common ancestry.

Keywords: pseudogene; processed pseudogene; retroprocessed pseudogene; age

Figure 1. The phylogenetic tree and evolutionary relationships for a mouse pseudogene. The substitution rates for the functional gene and the retroprocessed pseudogene from the time since inactivation (Ti) are equal to ai and bi, respectively.
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 References
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 Further Reading
    Bensasson D, Zhang D-X, Hartl DL and Hewitt GM (2001) Mitochondrial pseudogenes: evolution's misplaced witnesses. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 16: 314–321.
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    Vanin EF (1985) Processed pseudogenes: characteristics and evolution. Annual Review of Genetics 19: 253–272.
    Zheng D and Gerstein MB (2007) The ambiguous boundary between genes and pseudogenes: the dead rise up, or do they? Trends in Genetics 23: 219–224.

Related Sub-Topics:

Reconstruction of Phylogeny | Evolutionary Genomics | Molecular Evolution
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Article Title: Pseudogenes: Age
 
How to Cite close
Rhoads, Allen R, and Friedberg, Felix(May 2008) Pseudogenes: Age. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0005119.pub2]