New traits evolved thanks to duplication of genes

Geneticists at Trinity College Dublin have made a major breakthrough with important implications for understanding the evolution of genomes in a variety of organisms.

They found a mechanism sought for more than four decades that explains how gene duplication leads to novel functions in individuals.

Gene duplication is a biological phenomenon that leads to the sudden emergence of new genetic material. ‘Sister’  – the products of gene duplication – can survive across long evolutionary timescales, and allow organisms to tolerate otherwise lethal mutations.

The Trinity geneticists have now identified and described the mechanism underlying this increased tolerance, which is known as ‘mutational robustness’.

By experimentally demonstrating that this robustness is important for  to adapt to novel conditions, including those that are stressful to the cells, they have underlined the likely reason for the existence of gene duplication.

“Natural selection – a process that keeps essential things in the cell — also removes genes that are redundant from the genome,” said Dr. Mario A Fares, an assistant professor in Genetics at Trinity, and leading author of the study.

“The mechanism resolving the conflict between sister genes and their apparent evolutionary instability had remained a mystery for decades, but we have now cracked this latest part of the genetic code.”

Gene duplication is a frequent phenomenon in  (which safeguard their  within cell membranes), including yeast, plants, and animals. But understanding how duplication leads to biological innovation is difficult because evolution cannot be easily traced seeing as it occurs on timescales in the order of millions of years.

Read full original article: Geneticists solve 40-year-old dilemma to explain why duplicate genes remain in the genome

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