Category: Uncategorized

"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

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

GENOTYPE-PHENOTYPE (GP). "Often, the problem of linking genotypes and phenotypes is framed in terms of genotype and phenotype maps, and such graphical representations implicitly bring us away from the differential view of GP relationships." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd 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

THE NEW PARADIGM. "As of today, predominant thinking in biology research is that multiple genes interact with multiple environmental variables (such as abiotic factors, culture, or symbionts) to produce the phenotype." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd 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