Evolution of Eukaryotic Genome Structure

Abstract

Abstract The discipline of molecular evolution has until recent years focused on understanding patterns and processes of evolutionary change at the level of individual nucleotides, amino acids, and genes. Emerging from the fields of population genetics and evolutionary theory, and enabled by the advent of molecular biology, the nascent discipline of molecular evolution spawned a seemingly endless series of novel insights into the molecular nature of genetic variation and the fundamental forces that are responsible for molecular evolutionary change. Thus, within the span of a couple of decades, our understanding of the evolution of genes, mutational biases, natural selection, and genetic drift was dramatically enhanced. Notwithstanding these many advances, evolutionary processes operating at scales above that of individual genes were largely inaccessible until the last decade or so. These processes operate at the level of the whole genome, shaping assemblages of interacting and coevolving genes, influencing the size and structure of the genome, and, ultimately, affecting its function. Although beyond the scope of traditional molecular evolutionary studies, the exploration of genome-wide processes has in recent years been advanced by an explosion in genome sequencing efforts and in other relevant technologies.