Identification of a Novel CXCL1-Like Chemokine Gene in Macaques and Its Inactivation in Hominids

Chemokines are a rapidly evolving cytokine gene family. Because of various genome rearrangements after divergence of primates and rodents, humans and mice have different sets of chemokine genes, with humans having members outnumbering those of mice. Here, we report the occurrence of lineage-specific chemokine gene generation or inactivation events within primates. By using human chemokine sequences as queries, we isolated a novel cynomolgus macaque CXC chemokine cDNA. The encoded chemokine, termed CXCL1L (from CXCL1-like) showed the highest similarity to human CXCL1. A highly homologous gene was also found in the rhesus macaque genome. By comparing the genome organization of the major CXC chemokine clusters among the primates, we found that one copy of the duplicated CXCL1 genes turned into a pseudogene in the hominids, whereas the gene in macaques has been maintained as a functionally active CXCL1L. In addition, cynomolgus macaque was found to contain an additional CXC chemokine highly homologous to CXCL3, termed CXCL3L (from CXCL3-like). These results demonstrate the birth-and-death process of a new gene in association with gene duplication within the primates.