Yang Jing, Lusk Richard, Li Wen-Hsiung
Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, 1101 East 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2003 Dec 23;100(26):15661-5. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2536672100. Epub 2003 Dec 5.
Although the evolutionary significance of gene duplication has long been recognized, it remains unclear what determines gene duplicability. We find protein complexity to be an important determinant because the proportion of unduplicated genes (P) increases with the number of subunits in a protein. However, P is high (>or=65%) for both monomers and multimers in yeast, but <or=30% in human except for subunits of large multimers, implying that organismal complexity is a stronger determinant of gene duplicability than protein complexity. The same conclusion is reached from a comparison of family sizes in yeast and human.
尽管基因复制的进化意义早已得到认可,但尚不清楚是什么决定了基因的可复制性。我们发现蛋白质复杂性是一个重要的决定因素,因为未复制基因的比例(P)会随着蛋白质中亚基数量的增加而上升。然而,酵母中的单体和多聚体的P都很高(≥65%),而在人类中,除了大型多聚体的亚基外,P≤30%,这意味着生物复杂性比蛋白质复杂性更能决定基因的可复制性。通过比较酵母和人类的基因家族大小也得出了同样的结论。