Gu Xun, Su Zhixi, Huang Yong
Department of Genetics, Development and Cell Biology, Center for Bioinformatics and Biological Statistics, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA.
J Exp Zool B Mol Dev Evol. 2009 May 15;312B(3):164-70. doi: 10.1002/jez.b.21273.
Does miRNAs underlie the origin of organismal complexity in vertebrates? The current controversy is focused on whether the inventory of vertebrate miRNAs can be explained by the classical two-round genome duplications. We estimate the age distribution of vertebrate miRNA duplication events, showing the evolutionary scenario that gene/genome duplications in the early stage of vertebrates may expand the protein-encoding genes and miRNAs simultaneously. We further speculate that genetically lying behind the evolution of vertebrate complexity may be the proteome doubling and alterations of the epigenetic (including miRNA) machinery.
微小RNA（miRNAs）是脊椎动物机体复杂性起源的基础吗？当前的争议焦点在于脊椎动物miRNAs的清单是否可以用经典的两轮基因组复制来解释。我们估计了脊椎动物miRNA复制事件的年龄分布，显示出脊椎动物早期基因/基因组复制可能同时扩展蛋白质编码基因和miRNAs的进化情景。我们进一步推测，脊椎动物复杂性进化背后的遗传因素可能是蛋白质组加倍和表观遗传（包括miRNA）机制的改变。
