A RABBIT ALDA PSEUDOGENE DERIVED FROM A PARTIALLY SPLICED PRIMARY ALDOLASE-A TRANSCRIPT

The entire AldA processed pseudogene of rabbit was isolated and characterized. The pseudogene encodes the C-terminal portion of the protein from amino acids (aa) 126-363. There are deletions, insertions and nucleotide (nt) substitutions distributed throughout the 931 bp of identity shared with the 1.4-kb mRNA. There are 21 replacement codon substitutions, including a clearly deleterious change in the stop codon. This processed pseudogene has several uncommon features: (i) it has a 5'-boundary coincident with an intron/exon junction and does not encode the entire mRNA, (ii) there is a broken direct repeat that overlaps the region of shared identity with the mRNA rather than flanking it, and (iii) there is no poly(A) sequence. This processed pseudogene probably arose by integration of a DNA copy of a partially spliced primary transcript. The structure of this gene has added implications for the timing of posttranscriptional processing events.