Expression properties exhibit correlated patterns with the fate of duplicated genes, their divergence, and transcriptional plasticity in Saccharomycotina

Gene duplication is an important source of novelties and genome complexity. What genes are preserved as duplicated through long evolutionary times can shape the evolution of innovations. Identifying factors that influence gene duplicability is therefore an important aim in evolutionary biology. Here, we show that in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae the levels of gene expression correlate with gene duplicability, its divergence, and transcriptional plasticity. Genes that were highly expressed before duplication are more likely to be preserved as duplicates for longer evolutionary times and wider phylogenetic ranges than genes that were lowly expressed. Duplicates with higher expression levels exhibit greater divergence between their gene copies. Duplicates that exhibit higher expression divergence are those enriched for TATA-containing promoters. These duplicates also show transcriptional plasticity, which seems to be involved in the origin of adaptations to environmental stresses in yeast. While the expression properties of genes strongly affect their duplicability, divergence and transcriptional plasticity are enhanced after gene duplication. We conclude that highly expressed genes are more likely to be preserved as duplicates due to their promoter architectures, their greater tolerance to expression noise, and their ability to reduce the noise-plasticity conflict.