Phylogenetic detection of numerous gene duplications shared by animals, fungi and plants

Xiaofan Zhou,Zhenguo Lin,Hong Ma

doi:10.1186/gb-2010-11-4-r38

Xiaofan Zhou, Zhenguo Lin + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1186/gb-2010-11-4-r38

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Abstract

A phylogentic analysis reveals that many gene duplications occurred prior to the split in animals, fungi and plants.

Highlights

Gene duplication is considered a major driving force for evolution of genetic novelty, thereby facilitating functional divergence and organismal diversity, including the process of speciation
According to a widely accepted model for the eukaryotic origin, the ancestral eukaryotic cell was derived from an Archaea-like organism, with additional genes originated from the endosymbiosis of a proteobacterium-like cell, which evolved into the mitochondrion [37]
In this study, we conducted extensive phylogenetic analyses to investigate the extent of gene duplication in early eukaryotic evolution

Summary

Introduction

Gene duplication is considered a major driving force for evolution of genetic novelty, thereby facilitating functional divergence and organismal diversity, including the process of speciation. Fungi and plants are major eukaryotic kingdoms and the divergences between them are some of the most significant evolutionary events. Other well-known examples are the MADS-box genes in plants [2] and olfactory receptor genes in animals [3] These multigene families are subject to birth-and-death evolution and most new genes arise by gene duplication [3]. Gene duplication has been a ubiquitous phenomenon during eukaryotic history and has contributed to evolutionary innovation by generating additional genetic material for functional divergence and novelty [4]. Besides its important role in the evolution of new gene functions, gene duplication greatly contributes to the speciation process through the divergent resolution of duplicated genes in different populations [7]. Large-scale gene duplication events have been documented in animals and fungi, and are frequent in plants [8,9,10,11,12,13,14] and are believed to be associated with dramatic increases in species diversity, such as the radiation of vertebrates and the diversification of flowering plants [15,16]

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