假基因研究进展

Advances in Research on Pseudogenes

假基因是功能基因的缺陷拷贝,它在序列结构上与功能基因非常相似,但已丧失了正常的蛋白质编码功能.假基因曾被认为是一类典型的非编码"垃圾DNA",而如今人们发现假基因在基因表达调控和基因组进化过程中发挥着重要作用.从假基因的起源、序列结构特征、假基因的识别、假基因在染色体上的分布、分子进化规律,以及假基因功能等几个方面较为全面地介绍了该领域的最新研究进展.

Pseudogenes, disabled copies of functional genes, are structurally similar to its parantal genes, but lost their ability to produce proteins. Pseudogene was used to be considered as a typical kind of non-coding ＂junk DNA＂ . Increasing investigations, however, have shown that pseudogenes play important roles in gene regulation and genome evolution. The progress of research on pseudogenes is summarized in light of the origin and sequence characteristics of pseudogenes, identification of pseudogenes, genomic distribution, behaviour of its molecular evolution and functioning.