The myogenin gene, a member of the MyoD gene family, is a regulator of the myogenesis that takes place during the embryonic development. The objective of this study was to perform a phylogenic analysis of the myogenin gene to study its evolutionary history in the domestic species that have the sequencing data deposited in the Genbank. One common method to detect a gene evolution is made by comparing the ratio of nonsynonymous nucleotide substitution by the ratio of synonymous substitutions. Values greater than one (1) means that the gene has gone through changes that made the organism more adapted to the environment. The phylogenetic trees were obtained by maximum likelihood and the synonymous and nonsynonymous substitution rates were analyzed by the parsimony method. The results point out that probably the gene suffered an adaptive evolution in the Ruminantia group, Bos Taurus and Ovis aries, after these species diverged from their common ancestral. In the other species, the gene seems to be evolved in a conservative way.
myogenesis; DNA sequencing; PCR
