Nature 453, 729-731 (5 June 2008) | doi:10.1038/453729a; Published online 4
June 2008
Protein fossils live on as RNA
Rajkumar Sasidharan & Mark Gerstein

Rajkumar Sasidharan and Mark Gerstein are in the Departments of Molecular
Biophysics and Biochemistry, and Computer Science, Yale University, New
Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA.
Email: mark.gerstein@yale.edu

Abstract
Pseudogenes constitute many of the non-coding DNA sequences that make up
large parts of genomes. Once considered merely protein fossils, it now
emerges that some of them have active regulatory roles.

A central challenge in genome annotation is determining the function of
sequences that do not encode proteins, but make up the overwhelming bulk of
large genomes - some 99%% in humans. A significant fraction of these
sequences are pseudogenes, or fossils of ancient proteins, and although many
of them are transcribed into RNA, they have hitherto been deemed 'junk'.

Source: Nature
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7196/full/453729a.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek