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pseudogenes
Friday 27 October 2006
Pseudogenes have long been considered to be ’dead’, nonfunctional by-products of genome evolution.
Some pseudogenes are transcriptionally ’alive’, and a few might even have biochemical roles. Therefore, the boundary between genes (often considered to be ’living’) and pseudogenes (often considered to be ’dead’) might be ambiguous and difficult to define.
References
Zheng D, Gerstein MB. The ambiguous boundary between genes and pseudogenes: the dead rise up, or do they? Trends Genet. 2007 Mar 21; PMID: 17382428
Pavlicek A, Gentles AJ, Paces J, Paces V, Jurka J. Retroposition of processed pseudogenes: the impact of RNA stability and translational control. Trends Genet. 2006 Feb;22(2):69-73. PMID: 16356584
