Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comparative Study
. 2005 Jun 7;15(11):1016-21.
doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2005.04.035.

Gene complexity and gene duplicability

Xionglei He  1 , Jianzhi Zhang
Affiliations
Free article
Comparative Study

Gene complexity and gene duplicability

Xionglei He et al. Curr Biol. .
Free article

Abstract

Eukaryotic genes are on average more complex than prokaryotic genes in terms of expression regulation, protein length, and protein-domain structure [1-5]. Eukaryotes are also known to have a higher rate of gene duplication than prokaryotes do [6, 7]. Because gene duplication is the primary source of new genes [], the average gene complexity in a genome may have been increased by gene duplication if complex genes are preferentially duplicated. Here, we test this "gene complexity and gene duplicability" hypothesis with yeast genomic data. We show that, on average, duplicate genes from either whole-genome or individual-gene duplication have longer protein sequences, more functional domains, and more cis-regulatory motifs than singleton genes. This phenomenon is not a by-product of previously known mechanisms, such as protein function [10-13], evolutionary rate [14, 15], dosage [11], and dosage balance [16], that influence gene duplicability. Rather, it appears to have resulted from the sub-neo-functionalization process in duplicate-gene evolution [11]. Under this process, complex genes are more likely to be retained after duplication because they are prone to subfunctionalization, and gene complexity is regained via subsequent neofunctionalization. Thus, gene duplication increases both gene number and gene complexity, two important factors in the origin of genomic and organismal complexity.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources