High Correlation between Alu Elements and the Conversion of 3' UTR of mRNAs Processed Pseudogenes

Even though it represents 6 13% of human genomic DNA, Alu sequences are rarely found in coding regions. When in exon region, over 80 % of them are found in 3' untranslated region (UTR). Pseudogenes are an important component of human genome. Their functions are not clearly known and the mechanism of how they are generated is still debatable. Both the Alu and Pseudogenes are important research problems in molecular biology. mRNA is thought to be a prime source of pseudogene and active research is going on its molecular mechanism. We report, for the first time, that mRNAs containing Alu repeats at 3' UTR has a significantly high correlation with processed pseudogenes, suggesting a possibility that Alu containing mRNAs have a high tendency to become processed pseudogenes. It is known that about 10% of all human genes have been transposed. Transposed genes at 3' UTR without Alu repeat have about two processed pseudogenes per gene on average while we found with statistical significance that a transposed gene with Alu had over three processed Pseudogenes on average. Therefore, we propose Alu repeats as a new and important factor in the generation of pseudogenes.

The Atom of Evolution

The main mechanism of evolution is that biological entities change, are selected, and reproduce. We propose a different concept in terms of the main agent or atom of evolution: in the biological world, not an individual object,but its interactive network is the fundamental unit of evolution. The interaction network is composed of interaction pairs of information objects that have order information. This indicates a paradigm shift from 3D biological objects to an abstract network of information entities as the primary agent of evolution. It forces us to change our views about how organisms evolve and therefore the methods we use to analyze evolution.