PUBLICATION
The evolutionary fate of alternatively spliced homologous exons after gene duplication
- Authors
- Abascal, F., Tress, M., Valencia, A.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-150502-1
- Date
- 2015
- Source
- Genome biology and evolution 7(6): 1392-403 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Keywords
- Alternative splicing, gene duplication, homologous exons, protein diversity, subfunctionalization
- MeSH Terms
-
- Alternative Splicing*
- Amino Acid Sequence
- Animals
- Base Sequence
- Calcium Channels/genetics
- Conserved Sequence
- Evolution, Molecular*
- Exons*
- Gene Duplication*
- Humans
- Phylogeny
- Protein Isoforms/genetics
- Sequence Alignment
- Vertebrates/genetics
- PubMed
- 25931610 Full text @ Genome Biol. Evol.
Citation
Abascal, F., Tress, M., Valencia, A. (2015) The evolutionary fate of alternatively spliced homologous exons after gene duplication. Genome biology and evolution. 7(6):1392-403.
Abstract
Alternative splicing and gene duplication are the two main processes responsible for expanding protein functional diversity. While gene duplication can generate new genes and alternative splicing can introduce variation via alternative gene products. the interplay between the two processes is complex and poorly understood. Here we have carried out a study of the evolution of alternatively spliced exons after gene duplication to better understand the interaction between the two processes. We created a manually curated set of 97 human genes with mutually exclusively spliced homologous exons and analysed the evolution of these exons across five distantly related vertebrates (lamprey, spotted gar, zebrafish, fugu, and coelacanth). Most of these exons had an ancient origin (more than 400 Mya). There are two extreme evolutionary fates for homologous exons after gene duplication and we found examples supporting both. We observed 11 cases in which gene duplication was accompanied by splice isoform separation, i.e. each paralogue specifically conserved just one distinct ancestral homologous exon. At other extreme, we identified genes in which the homologous exons were always conserved within paralogues, suggesting that the alternative splicing event cannot easily be separated from the function in these genes. The presence of many cases that fall in between these two extremes highlights the diversity of biological systems and suggests that the subtle balance between alternative splicing and gene duplication is adjusted to the specific cellular context of each gene.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping