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Nuclear protein-coding genes support lungfish and not the coelacanth as the closest living relatives of land vertebrates

Academic Article
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Overview

authors

  • Brinkmann, H.
  • Venkatesh, B.
  • Brenner, Sydney
  • Meyer, A.

publication date

  • April 2004

journal

  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America  Journal

abstract

  • The colonization of land by tetrapod ancestors is one of the major questions in the evolution of vertebrates. Despite intense molecular phylogenetic research on this problem during the last 15 years, there is, until now, no statistically supported answer to the question of whether coelacanths or lungfish are the closest living relatives of tetrapods. We determined DNA sequences of the nuclear-encoded recombination activating genes (Rag1 and Rag2) from all three major lungfish groups, the Australian Neoceratodis forsteri, the South American Lepidosiren paradoxa and the African lungfish Protopterus dolloi, and the Indonesian coelacanth Latimeria menadoensis. Phylogenetic analyses of both the single gene and the concatenated data sets of RAG1 and RAG2 found that the lungfishes are the closest living relatives of the land vertebrates. These results are supported by high bootstrap values, Bayesian posterior probabilities, and likelihood ratio tests.

subject areas

  • Animals
  • DNA
  • DNA-Binding Proteins
  • Fishes
  • Genes, RAG-1
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Nuclear Proteins
  • Polymerase Chain Reaction
  • Vertebrates
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Identity

PubMed Central ID

  • PMC387346

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0027-8424

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1073/pnas.0400609101

PubMed ID

  • 15037746
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Additional Document Info

start page

  • 4900

end page

  • 4905

volume

  • 101

issue

  • 14

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