Role discovered for a pseudogene"

I don't think this got a run here yet (apologies if I missed it), but I wuld be interested to hear any commentsResearchers in Japan and UCSD Discover Novel Role For PseudogenesThe mantra of molecular biology — DNA makes RNA, which makes protein* — has pretty much ignored pseudogenes. Considered defective copies of DNA segments, the 20,000 pseudogenes in the human genome are thought to be non-participants in the protein-production assembly line.A comparison of normal mice, left, to mice with a defective pseudogene shows the resulting bone deformities.
Now, scientists in Japan and at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have discovered a novel regulatory role for one pseudogene, showing that it stabilizes a similar protein-coding gene on another chromosome. When the pseudogene was disabled, protein-production was compromised, with resulting abnormal kidneys and bones in laboratory mice. When a functioning pseudogene was re-introduced into mouse embryos, the mice developed normally.From......http://health.ucsd.edu/news/2003/04_30_Boris.html

And the abstract: from Nature 423, 91 - 96 (2003).And the conclusion of a companion commentary: J T Lee, Nature 423, 26 - 28 (2003)

I notice in the glossary here there is no definition of "pseudogene".There is a brief definition in coragyps post above (thank you). Can anyone add to this?
I understand it is a "gene" which is apparently deficient in some way, thus not enabling it to function as a gene.
Is this accurate?
Does this mean that any gene which appears this way is labelled as a pseudogene?
Are there different kinds of pseudogenes/Thanks in advance to anyone who gives their time with an answer.[This message has been edited by judge, 05-09-2003][This message has been edited by judge, 05-09-2003]

I brought this up in a different thread. I dont see what it has to do with the central dogma though, it is still DNA>RNA, there are so many non coding RNAs with functions nowadays that one more is hardly news.[This message has been edited by Wounded King, 05-09-2003]

http://bioinfo.mbb.yale.edu/genome/pseudogene/#whatHi Judge,
The above link should help a bit and describes generally the different kinds of pseudogenes.cheers,
M

Research recently published in PNAS suggests that in fact the model Hirotsune, et al. put forward to explain the effect is quite wrong (Gray et al., 2006). They detected no mRNA for the Makorin1-p1pseudogene and found the locus to be fully methylated. direct diruption of the Makrin1 gene prodced a completely different phenotype to that seen in the original study.so it seems in fact that this really is a pseudogene, and not a functional one either, ho hum.TTFN,WK

Of course even non-coding pseudogenes might have some kind of "function" in a structural sense. For example I can imagine that an upstream pseudogene might protect a gene from being affected by the promoters of other nearby loci by putting physical distance between exons of different genes. Plenty of non-coding sequences are functional, the stop codon being probably the most obvious example.Does anybody know if a possible structural role for pseudogenes has been explored in the literature?mick