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REWIRING GENE REGULATION. "Our results suggest that promoter gain and loss is an important process in the evolutionary rewiring of gene regulation and may be a significant source of phenotypic diversification." http://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2015/07/30/gr.190546.115 View in LinkedIn

"PROMOTOR TURNOVER has occurred at the majority (>56%) of protein-coding genes since humans and mice diverged. Tissue-restricted promoters are the most evolutionarily volatile where retrotransposition is an important, but not the sole source of innovation." http://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2015/07/30/gr.190546.115 View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this meditation on the connection between genes and traits, and how our collective scientific perspective on the subject has drastically modified based in new data. We have transitioned from a simplistic view of the relationship of genotype to phenotype to one that appreciates the profound contextual interconnectedness of natural systems. Next weekend we consider why alternation of generations occurs, where gene numbers keep halving and doubling in life cycles. View in LinkedIn

ABUNDANT EXAMPLES. "In the last 15 years, more than 1,000 examples of DNA sequence changes have been linked to naturally occurring non-deleterious phenotypic differences between individuals or species in Eukaryotes." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd 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

"THE DIFFERENTIAL VIEW of GP relationships is a useful explanatory framework in the context of pervasive pleiotropy, epistasis, and environmental effects." (GP = genotype-phenotype relationship). https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

MOLECULAR EVOLUTION. "The goal of this review is to bring transcriptional regulation into the mainstream of molecular evolution. We are concerned here with promoters (cis-regulatory sequences that influence transcription) and transcription factors (proteins that interact with these sequences)." A great read. https://lnkd.in/dTi6Znf View in LinkedIn

"TRANSCRIPTION REGULATION is a central component in the control of gene expression. Identification of functional cis-elements in promoter regions, a key to understanding gene regulation, has turned out to be a difficult task thus far." https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-2007-8-10-r225 View in LinkedIn

DOMINANT LIFESTYLE ON EARTH. "We have heard much about non-coding RNAs, mobile genetic elements, repeat sequences, and introns— all of them formerly being termed ‘‘junk,’’ but now we can imagine these as remnants of persistent viral infection events. Thus, the persistent viral lifestyle is the most dominant biological lifestyle on this planet." https://lnkd.in/eWydwab View in LinkedIn

NOT JUNK DNA. "The majority of the human genome consists of non-coding regions that have been called junk DNA. However, recent studies have unveiled that these regions contain cis-regulatory elements, such as promoters, enhancers, silencers, insulators, etc. These regulatory elements can play crucial roles in controlling gene expressions in specific cell types, conditions, and developmental stages. Disruption to these regions could contribute to phenotype changes." https://lnkd.in/dpPBtPH View in LinkedIn