How mutations accumulate in genomes is the central question of molecular evolution theories. However, our understanding of this process is far from complete. Drake's rule is a notoriously universal property of genomes from microbes to mammals-the number of (functional) mutations per-genome per-generation is approximately constant within a phylum, despite the orders of magnitude differences in genome sizes and diverse populations' properties.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGene duplication is the main source of evolutionary novelties. However, the problem with duplicates is that the purifying selection overlooks deleterious mutations in the redundant sequence, which therefore, instead of gaining a new function, often degrades into a functionless pseudogene. This risk of functional loss instead of gain is much higher for small populations of higher organisms with a slow and complex development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIt is well known that repositioning of a gene often exerts a strong impact on its own expression and whole development. Here we report the results of genome-wide analyses suggesting that repositioning may also radically change the evolutionary fate of gene duplicates. As an indicator of these changes, we used the GC content of gene pairs which originated by duplication.
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