Linda, thoroughly be-catted
Mice and
humans are both mammals, but our lineages separated way back in the middle
Mesozoic, even before T. rex and his buddies roamed the earth. Given that much time, evolution has played
hob with our respective genomes, developing new genes where such were required
and eliminating genes that had become functionally useless. Yet mice and men have many gene sequences in
common – and until recently nobody knew why.
Well, smart folk at Fred Hutch seem to have cracked the puzzle. These “ultra-conserved” gene sequences appear
to contain “poison exons”, which are needed to allow genetic sequences to be
expressed, or to make sure they aren’t. Ultra-conserved
genetic sequences are fairly common, it seems, and have been bothering evolutionary
biologists for some time.
All this has nothing much to do with ovarian
cancer, but it is fun genetics and I thought you might be interested.
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