Identification of a recently evolved goat embryonic beta-globin pseudogene which retains transcriptional activity in vitro.

A clone containing the entire goat epsilon V beta-globin gene, which lies downstream from the two tandemly duplicated four-gene sets containing the beta C and beta A genes in the linkage group 5'-epsilon I-epsilon II-psi beta X-beta C-epsilon III-epsilon IV-psi beta Z-beta A-epsilon V-3', was isolated, and the sequence of the gene was determined. epsilon V is most homologous to the first gene in each of these sets, epsilon I and epsilon III, and appears to be a third duplicated copy of these genes, possibly the first gene in a third four-gene set. Homology of epsilon V to epsilon I is very high (93.2%) in coding regions, and all transcription, processing, and potential translation consensus sequence elements appear to be present, although the Hogness box of epsilon V is altered compared with that of epsilon I by the deletion of an A(AATAAAA----AATAAA). Nevertheless, epsilon V is clearly a pseudogene as a result of two deletions and one insertion (or insertion-deletion) in its coding sequence, the first of which produces an in-frame stop codon at amino acid 54. Unlike the more highly mutated goat beta-like pseudogene duplicates psi beta X and psi beta Z, epsilon V acquired its defects after the duplication event in which it was created. Its recently acquired defects have left the epsilon V promoter sufficiently conserved to retain transcriptional activity in vitro. The acquisition of defects by this gene may be related to the multiple gene duplications which have created at least five epsilon type genes in the goat beta-globin locus.