Maintenance of duplicate genes and their functional redundancy by reduced expression.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Qian W
PROVIDER: S-EPMC2942974 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Oct
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Maintenance of duplicate genes and their functional redundancy by reduced expression.
Qian Wenfeng W Liao Ben-Yang BY Chang Andrew Ying-Fei AY Zhang Jianzhi J
Trends in genetics : TIG 20100812 10
Although evolutionary theories predict functional divergence between duplicate genes, many old duplicates still maintain a high degree of functional similarity and are synthetically lethal or sick, an observation that has puzzled many geneticists. We propose that expression reduction, a special type of subfunctionalization, facilitates the retention of duplicates and the conservation of their ancestral functions. Consistent with this hypothesis, gene expression data from both yeasts and mammals ...[more]
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