The complete human olfactory subgenome.
By Gwênlyn Glusman, Itai Yanai, I. Rubin, Doron Lancet. Genome Research, 2001
697 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Olfactory receptors likely constitute the largest gene superfamily in the vertebrate genome. Here we present the nearly complete human olfactory subgenome elucidated by mining the genome draft with gene discovery algorithms. Over 900 olfactory receptor genes and pseudogenes (ORs) were identified, two-thirds of which were not annotated previously. The number of extrapolated ORs is in good agreement with previous theoretical predictions. The sequence of at least 63% of the ORs is disrupted by what appears to be a random process of pseudogene formation. ORs constitute 17 gene families, 4 of which contain more than 100 members each. "Fish-like" Class I ORs, previously considered a relic in higher tetrapods, constitute as much as 10% of the human repertoire, all in one large cluster on chromosome 11. Their lower pseudogene fraction suggests a functional significance. ORs are disposed on all human chromosomes except 20 and Y, and nearly 80% are found in clusters of 6-138 genes. A novel comparative cluster analysis was used to trace the evolutionary path that may have led to OR proliferation and diversification throughout the genome. The results of this analysis suggest the following genome expansion history: first, the generation of a "tetrapod-specific" Class II OR cluster on chromosome 11 by local duplication, then a single-step duplication of this cluster to chromosome 1, and finally an avalanche of duplication events out of chromosome 1 to most other chromosomes. The results of the data mining and characterization of ORs can be accessed at the Human Olfactory Receptor Data Exploratorium Web site (http://bioinfo.weizmann.ac.il/HORDE).
Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Nutrition and Dietetics, Sensory Systems
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/39bdce84f3de161f868423faa68b8dc362c013f9
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Citations in the corpus
- The olfactory receptor gene superfamily of the mouse (2002, background): “After the release of the human genome, the human OR repertoire was thoroughly explored at the level of the whole genom”
- Olfaction: diverse species, conserved principles. (2005, neutral): “The human genome, for example, contains just under 400 apparently functional olfactory receptor genes and a similar number of OR pseudogenes (Glusman et al., 2001).”
- The evolution of animal chemosensory receptor gene repertoires: roles of chance and necessity (2008, background): “Recent publications of the whole genome sequences of various organisms have made it possible to identify all of the CR gene”