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¹ Laboratory of Molecular Evolution and Genome Diversity, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China
² Laboratory for Conservation and Utilization of Bio-resources, Yunnan University, Kunming 650091, China
³ Graduate School, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China

(Requests for offprints should be addressed to Y-P Zhang; Email: zhangyp{at}public.km.yn.cn)

^* (Ying Li and Chun Ye contributed equally to this paper)

The growth hormone (GH) gene family represents an erratic and complex evolutionary pattern, involving many evolutionary events, such as multiple gene duplications, positive selection, the birth-and-death process and gene conversions. In the present study, we cloned and sequenced GH-like genes from three species of New World monkeys (NWM). Phylogenetic analysis strongly suggest monophyly for NWM GH-like genes with respect to those of Old World monkeys (OWM) and hominoids, indicating that independent gene duplications have occurred in NWM GH-like genes. There are three main clusters of genes in putatively functional NWM GH-like genes, according to our gene tree. Comparison of the ratios of nonsynonymous and synonymous substitutions revealed that these three clusters of genes evolved under different kinds of selective pressures. Detailed analysis of the evolution of pseudogenes showed that the evolutionary pattern of this gene family in platyrrhines is in agreement with the so-called birth-and-death process.

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