Is Esterase-P Encoded by a Cryptic Pseudogene In Drosophila melanogaster?

Abstract

We have amplified and sequenced the gene encoding Esterase-P (Est-P) in 10 strains of Drosophila melanogaster. Three premature termination codons occur in the coding region of the gene in two strains. This observation, together with other indirect evidence, leads us to propose that Est-P may he a pseudogene in D. melanogaster. Est-P would he a “cryptic” pseudogene, in the sense that it retains intact the coding sequence (without stop codons and other alterations usually observed in pseudogenes) in most D. melanogaster strains. We conjecture that the β-esterase cluster may consist in other Drosophila species of functional and nonfunctional genes. We also conjecture that the rarity of detected pseudogenes in Drosophila may he due to the difficulty of discovering them, because most of them are cryptic.

Adaptation and Cryptic Pseudogenization in Penguin Toll-Like Receptors

“…TLR15 haplotype represents a cryptic pseudogene, in the sense that the open reading frame is complete in the genome and is capable of yielding a full-length protein, but which lacks functionality. Cryptic pseudogenes are difficult to detect without functional analysis or an overt phenotype, and have only rarely been reported ( Balakirev and Ayala 1996 ; Wolfe and dePamphilis 1998 ). More commonly, a gene that undergoes duplication may experience functional redundancy and subsequent loss of one copy through pseudogenization ( Zhang 2003 ).…”