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Duplication is more common among laterally transferred genes than among indigenous genes

BACKGROUND: Recent developments in the understanding of paralogous evolution have prompted a focus not only on obviously advantageous genes, but also on genes that can be considered to have a weak or sporadic impact on the survival of the organism. Here we examine the duplicative behavior of a categ...

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Autores principales: Hooper, Sean D, Berg, Otto G
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2003
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC193641/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12914657
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author Hooper, Sean D
Berg, Otto G
author_facet Hooper, Sean D
Berg, Otto G
author_sort Hooper, Sean D
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Recent developments in the understanding of paralogous evolution have prompted a focus not only on obviously advantageous genes, but also on genes that can be considered to have a weak or sporadic impact on the survival of the organism. Here we examine the duplicative behavior of a category of genes that can be considered to be mostly transient in the genome, namely laterally transferred genes. Using both a compositional method and a gene-tree approach, we identify a number of proposed laterally transferred genes and study their nucleotide composition and frequency of duplication. RESULTS: It is found that duplications are significantly overrepresented among potential laterally transferred genes compared to the indigenous ones. Furthermore, the GC(3 )distribution of potential laterally transferred genes was found to be largely uniform in some genomes, suggesting an import from a broad range of donors. CONCLUSIONS: The results are discussed not in a context of strongly optimized established genes, but rather of genes with weak or ancillary functions. The importance of duplication may therefore depend on the variability and availability of weak genes for which novel functions may be discovered. Therefore, lateral transfer may accelerate the evolutionary process of duplication by bringing foreign genes that have mainly weak or no function into the genome.
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spelling pubmed-1936412003-09-15 Duplication is more common among laterally transferred genes than among indigenous genes Hooper, Sean D Berg, Otto G Genome Biol Research BACKGROUND: Recent developments in the understanding of paralogous evolution have prompted a focus not only on obviously advantageous genes, but also on genes that can be considered to have a weak or sporadic impact on the survival of the organism. Here we examine the duplicative behavior of a category of genes that can be considered to be mostly transient in the genome, namely laterally transferred genes. Using both a compositional method and a gene-tree approach, we identify a number of proposed laterally transferred genes and study their nucleotide composition and frequency of duplication. RESULTS: It is found that duplications are significantly overrepresented among potential laterally transferred genes compared to the indigenous ones. Furthermore, the GC(3 )distribution of potential laterally transferred genes was found to be largely uniform in some genomes, suggesting an import from a broad range of donors. CONCLUSIONS: The results are discussed not in a context of strongly optimized established genes, but rather of genes with weak or ancillary functions. The importance of duplication may therefore depend on the variability and availability of weak genes for which novel functions may be discovered. Therefore, lateral transfer may accelerate the evolutionary process of duplication by bringing foreign genes that have mainly weak or no function into the genome. BioMed Central 2003 2003-07-11 /pmc/articles/PMC193641/ /pubmed/12914657 Text en Copyright © 2003 Hooper and Berg; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's original URL.
spellingShingle Research
Hooper, Sean D
Berg, Otto G
Duplication is more common among laterally transferred genes than among indigenous genes
title Duplication is more common among laterally transferred genes than among indigenous genes
title_full Duplication is more common among laterally transferred genes than among indigenous genes
title_fullStr Duplication is more common among laterally transferred genes than among indigenous genes
title_full_unstemmed Duplication is more common among laterally transferred genes than among indigenous genes
title_short Duplication is more common among laterally transferred genes than among indigenous genes
title_sort duplication is more common among laterally transferred genes than among indigenous genes
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC193641/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12914657
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