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Divergent microsatellite evolution in the human and chimpanzee lineages
Author(s) -
Gáspári Zoltán,
Ortutay Csaba,
Tóth Gábor
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/j.febslet.2007.04.073
Subject(s) - microsatellite , biology , genome , evolutionary biology , lineage (genetic) , human genome , genetics , sequence (biology) , genome evolution , gene , allele
Comparison of the complete human genome sequence to one of its closest relatives, the chimpanzee genome, provides a unique opportunity for exploring recent evolutionary events affecting the microsatellites in these species. A simple assumption on microsatellite distribution is that the total length of perfect repeats is constant compared to that of imperfect ones regardless of the repeat sequence. In this paper, we show that this is valid for most of the chimpanzee genome but not for a number of human chromosomes. Our results suggest accelerated evolution of microsatellites in the human genome relative to the chimpanzee lineage.