Maintenance of duplicate genes and their functional redundancy by reduced expression

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Trends in genetics 2010-10, Vol.26 (10), p.425-430
Main Authors: Qian, Wenfeng, Liao, Ben-Yang, Chang, Andrew Ying-Fei, Zhang, Jianzhi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Biological and medical sciences
Down-Regulation
Evolution, Molecular
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gene Dosage
Gene Duplication
Genes, Duplicate
Genetics of eukaryotes. Biological and molecular evolution
Humans
Medical Education
Molecular and cellular biology
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Summary: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 show a substantial decrease in the level of gene expression after duplication. Whereas the majority of the expression reductions are likely to be neutral, some are apparently beneficial to rebalancing gene dosage after duplication.
ISSN:0168-9525
DOI:10.1016/j.tig.2010.07.002