Structural and functional characterization of a putative de novo gene in Drosophila

Andreas Lange, Prajal H. Patel, Brennen Heames, Adam M. Damry, Thorsten Saenger, Colin J. Jackson, Geoffrey D. Findlay () and Erich Bornberg-Bauer ()
Additional contact information
Andreas Lange: University of Münster
Prajal H. Patel: College of the Holy Cross
Brennen Heames: University of Münster
Adam M. Damry: ANU College of Science
Thorsten Saenger: Liver and Metabolic Diseases, Hannover Medical School
Colin J. Jackson: ANU College of Science
Geoffrey D. Findlay: College of the Holy Cross
Erich Bornberg-Bauer: University of Münster

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Comparative genomic studies have repeatedly shown that new protein-coding genes can emerge de novo from noncoding DNA. Still unknown is how and when the structures of encoded de novo proteins emerge and evolve. Combining biochemical, genetic and evolutionary analyses, we elucidate the function and structure of goddard, a gene which appears to have evolved de novo at least 50 million years ago within the Drosophila genus. Previous studies found that goddard is required for male fertility. Here, we show that Goddard protein localizes to elongating sperm axonemes and that in its absence, elongated spermatids fail to undergo individualization. Combining modelling, NMR and circular dichroism (CD) data, we show that Goddard protein contains a large central α-helix, but is otherwise partially disordered. We find similar results for Goddard’s orthologs from divergent fly species and their reconstructed ancestral sequences. Accordingly, Goddard’s structure appears to have been maintained with only minor changes over millions of years.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21667-6 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-21667-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21667-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().