Hi all! Long time no see!
Alpha 1,3 GTI have a discussion about pseudogenes and the alpha 1,3 GalactosylTransferase pseudogene came up. The assertion was the AiG statement that it was similar in in cow, squirrel, monkey and gorilla. (Gorilla and monkey?) I haven't studied the similarities yet. (If you have done that I would appreciate if you quoted the results.) Anyway, why I am here is because I need some definitions out of the field. I am not exactly a newbie anymore, but I ran out of definitions. So, I need some.
DefinitionsI know two terms that I use now as a handle.
Orthologous genes are genes that come from one ancestor gene.
Paralogous genes are genes that evolved parallel. I am searching for others distinctions and will also use ortho- and para- as prefixes.
There are pseudogenes that are exact copies of each other on an amino acid level. I would name them ortho-acidic. (The alanine, asparagine, cysteine, glutamine, histidine, leucine, etc. elements are in the same order.) There are also pseudogenes that are both pseudogenes of some original gene, but have other mutations that made them pseudogenes. I would name them para-acidic.
Another distinction. There are also pseudogenes that are exact copies all the way down. I would call them ortho-nucleic. There are pseudogenes that although ortho-acidic are not the same on the lowest level (they have only silent mutations as opposed to missense or nonsense mutations). The codons are in the same order. I would call them para-nucleic.
Of course these terms don't apply for pseudogenes only. Also functional genes between species can be compared on these different levels. Does anybody know the "official" terms?
RelevanceNow to relate to the discussion. If a pseudogene shared by cow, squirrel and monkey is ortho-nucleic or ortho-acidic that would be much more remarkable than if it is only para-acidic. And that's what I want to make clear with my definitions. (I secretly expect that they won't be ortho-nucleic or ortho-acidic.)
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