Abstract
Pseudogenes are DNA sequences with high homology to the corresponding functional gene, but, because of the accumulation of various mutations, they have lost their initial functions to code for proteins. Consequently, pseudogenes have been considered until few years ago dysfunctional relatives of the corresponding ancestral genes, and then useless in the course of genome evolution. However, several studies have recently established that pseudogenes are owners of key biological functions. Indeed, some pseudogenes control the expression of functional genes by competitively binding to the miRNAs, some of them generate small interference RNAs to negatively modulate the expression of functional genes, and some of them even encode functional mutated proteins. Here, we concentrate our attention on the pseudogenes of the HMGA1 gene, that codes for the HMGA1a and HMGA1b proteins having a critical role in development and cancer progression. In this review, we analyze the family of HMGA1 pseudogenes through three aspects: classification, characterization, and their possible function and involvement in cancer.
Highlights
The term “pseudogene” comes from the Greek word “pseudo” meaning false
The biological meaning of pseudogenes was completely obscure until few years ago, whereas recent studies have shown their critical role in regulating gene transcription mainly functioning as decoy for miRNAs, and evidenced a role of pseudogenes in carcinogenesis [109,110,111,112,113,114,115,116]
We have identified, by bioinformatic search, eight pseudogenes for the HMGA1 gene whose expression is a feature of human malignancies with a key function in promoting cancer progression
Summary
The term “pseudogene” comes from the Greek word “pseudo” meaning false. Pseudogenes are identified as “genomic fossils”[1]. The human BRAF pseudogene (BRAFP1) has been recently found overexpressed in various tumor types, suggesting that it may contribute to cancer development. Even though classified as non-coding RNA, it has only four aminoacidic mutations along the protein sequence compared to HMGA1 sequence, without affecting its translationability www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget (Figure 1).
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