Trends Genet; group Kaessmann

Trends Genet. 2009 Nov 19. [Epub ahead of print]

The emergence of new genes on the young therian X.

Potrzebowski L, Vinckenbosch N, Kaessmann H.

Center for Integrative Genomics, University of Lausanne, Genopode Building, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.

Recent studies have revealed that our sex chromosomes differentiated relatively recently from ancestral autosomes in the common ancestor of placental and marsupial mammals (therians). Here, we show that the therian X started to accumulate new retroduplicate genes with overall sex-biased expression upon therian sex chromosome differentiation. This process reached its peak within the first approximately 90 million years of sex chromosome evolution and then leveled off. Taken together, our observations suggest that the major sex-related functional remodeling of the X was completed relatively soon after the origination of therian sex chromosomes.

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