Abstract
Epistasis has long been recognized as fundamentally important in understanding the structure, function, and evolutionary dynamics of biological systems. Gene duplication is a major mechanism of evolution for genetic novelties. Here, we demonstrate that genes evolved significantly more epistatic interactions after duplication. The connectivity of duplicate gene pairs in epistatic networks is positively correlated with the extent of their sequence divergence. Furthermore, duplicate gene pairs tend to epistatically interact with genes that occupy more functional spaces than do single-copy genes. These results show that gene duplication plays an important role in the evolution of epistasis.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 295-301 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Genome Biology and Evolution |
| Volume | 3 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2011 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Epistasis
- Gene duplication
- Genetic innovation
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
- Genetics