Month: September 2022

REGULATION TRUMPS NOVELTY. "It turns out that the genomic changes that enabled these evolutionary developments were far more subtle—it is the regulation, rather than the modification or creation, of genes that has driven macroscopic events throughout evolution." https://lnkd.in/eNHFjJ8 View in LinkedIn

DIVERGENT EXPRESSION. "Even in closely related species with highly similar genome sequences, gene expression patterns can be quite different. This divergence in gene expression and regulation has been postulated to play a major role in evolution and is believed to be one of the primary sources of phenotypic variation between species." https://lnkd.in/dZmd2Vb View in LinkedIn

TRANSCRIPTION FACTORS. "Throughout evolution, regulatory networks need to expand and adapt to accommodate novel genes and gene functions. Recent studies demonstrate that changes in transcription factors contribute to the evolution of regulatory networks. In particular, duplication of transcription factors followed by specific mutations in their DNA-binding or interaction domains propels the divergence and emergence of new networks." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0958166915000208 View in LinkedIn

PROMISCUOUS REGULATORS. "The innate promiscuity and modularity of regulatory networks contributes to their evolvability: duplicated promiscuous regulators and their target promoters can acquire mutations that lead to gradual increases in specificity, allowing neofunctionalization or subfunctionalization." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0958166915000208 View in LinkedIn

CODING GENES. "In fact, protein-encoding genes, which account for less than 2% of the genome in many higher organisms, tend to be highly conserved and are thus unlikely to lead a phenotypic revolution on their own." https://lnkd.in/eNHFjJ8 View in LinkedIn

VERTEBRATE HOMOGENEITY. "Vertebrates have almost identical numbers of genes—slightly less than 30,000—with remarkable similarity across diverse species. Mice and humans, for example, have many genes for which sequences are 90% identical, yielding protein products that are almost indistinguishable." https://lnkd.in/eNHFjJ8 View in LinkedIn

TWO GENE COPIES. "Historically, genome duplication was thought to be a mechanism of evolutionary change because it creates redundant copies of protein-encoding genes with impunity; these copies can have mutations, but the cell will continue to function as it retains an original version of the gene that was duplicated." https://lnkd.in/eNHFjJ8 View in LinkedIn

FREQUENT DUPLICATION. "Major gene duplication events certainly occur frequently in plants and micro-organisms." https://lnkd.in/eNHFjJ8 View in LinkedIn

LEAPS IN EVOLUTION. "Usually, mutations are deleterious, but the duplicated genes are not generally expressed and so do no harm with no selective pressure acting against them. Occasionally, however, a mutation can result in a potentially useful modification of the gene, which can then be activated and selected. This, it is argued, could create relatively rapidly new functions for genes and thus explain major leaps in evolution." https://lnkd.in/eNHFjJ8 View in LinkedIn

REGULATORY MUTATIONS. "Recent studies indicate that mutations in regulatory proteins may be more common than previously appreciated. Moreover, these changes can play a prominent role in regulatory network evolution by altering expression, molecular interactions and post-translational modifications of the regulator." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0958166915000208 View in LinkedIn