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Human Molecular Genetics Advance Access published online on September 22, 2004
Human Molecular Genetics, doi:10.1093/hmg/ddh301
© 2004 by Oxford University Press
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Article

Evolution of the tumor suppressor BRCA1 locus in primates: implications for cancer predisposition

Adam Pavlicek 1, Vladimir N. Noskov 2, Natalay Kouprina 2, J. Carl Barrett 2, Jerzy Jurka 1, and Vladimir Larionov 2*

1 Genetic Information Research Institute, Mountain View, CA, USA
2 Laboratory of Biosystems and Cancer, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: larionov{at}mail.nih.gov.


  Abstract

Germ-line mutations in the BRCA1 gene predispose affected individuals to breast and ovarian cancer syndromes. In an attempt to systematically analyze a broader spectrum of genetic changes ranging from frequent exon deletions and duplications to amino acid replacements and protein truncations, we isolated and characterized full size BRCA1 homologues from a representative group of nonhuman primates. Our analysis represents the first comprehensive sequence comparison of primate BRCA1 loci and corresponding proteins. The comparison revealed an unusually high proportion of indels in noncoding DNA. The major force driving evolutionary changes in noncoding BRCA1 sequences was Alu-mediated rearrangements, including Alu transpositions and Alu-associated deletions, indicating that structural instability of this locus may be intrinsic in anthropoids. Analysis of the nonsynonymous/synonymous ratio in coding portions of the gene revealed the presence of both conserved and rapidly evolving regions in the BRCA1 protein. Previously, a rapidly evolving region with evidence of positive evolutionary selection in human and chimpanzee had been identified only in exon 11. Here we show that most of the internal BRCA1 sequence is variable between primates and evolved under positive selection. In contrast, the terminal regions of BRCA1, which encode the RING finger and BRCT domains, experienced negative selection which left them almost identical between the compared primates. Distribution of the reported missense mutations, but not frameshift and nonsense mutations, is positively correlated with BRCA1 protein conservation. Finally, based on protein sequence conservation we identified missense changes that are likely to compromise BRCA1 function.


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