Preprint.pdf

Researchers analyzed pseudogenes of glycolytic enzymes in vertebrates, finding that glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) has an anomalously high number of pseudogenes, suggesting a recent burst of retrotranspositional activity. They assembled a comprehensive catalog of processed and duplicated pseudogenes in various vertebrate genomes, including human, chimpanzee, mouse, rat, chicken, zebrafish, pufferfish, fruitfly, and worm. The study revealed that glycolytic pseudogenes are predominantly processed, and that GAPDH has a significantly higher number of pseudogenes in certain species, such as mouse and rat, compared to others, like zebrafish and chicken. The researchers also developed a method to identify conserved syntenic blocks and estimated pseudogene ages, finding evidence of bursts of retrotranspositional activity in the human, mouse, and rat lineages. Overall, the study suggests that most glycolytic pseudogenes were created within the last 50 million years, after the divergence of rodent and primate lineages.