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Some examples of such neofunctionalization is the apparent mutation of a duplicated digestive gene in a family of ice fish into an antifreeze gene and duplication leading to a novel snake venom gene [23] and the synthesis of 1 beta-hydroxytestosterone in pigs.
Evolution by gene duplication is an event by which a gene or part of a gene can have two identical copies that can not be distinguished from each other. This phenomenon is understood to be an important source of novelty in evolution, providing for an expanded repertoire of molecular activities.
Gene duplication events can also be detected by looking at increases in gene duplicates. A good example of using gene redundancy in evolutionary studies is the Evolution of the KCS gene family in plants. This paper studies how one KCS gene evolved into an entire gene family via duplication events.
A gene family is a set of several similar genes, formed by duplication of a single original gene, and generally with similar biochemical functions. One such family are the genes for human hemoglobin subunits; the ten genes are in two clusters on different chromosomes, called the α-globin and β-globin loci.
This gene duplication has created a copy number variation. The chromosome now has two copies of this section of DNA, rather than one. Copy number variation (CNV) is a phenomenon in which sections of the genome are repeated and the number of repeats in the genome varies between individuals. [1]
Neofunctionalization is the process by which a gene acquires a new function after a gene duplication event. The figure shows that once a gene duplication event has occurred one gene copy retains the original ancestral function (represented by the green paralog), while the other acquires mutations that allow it to diverge and develop a new function (represented by the blue paralog).
Pseudogenes are nonfunctional segments of DNA that resemble functional genes.Pseudogenes can be formed from both protein-coding genes and non-coding genes. In the case of protein-coding genes, most pseudogenes arise as superfluous copies of functional genes, either directly by gene duplication or indirectly by reverse transcription of an mRNA transcript.
Characteristic examples of genetic redundancy include (Enns, Kanaoka et al. 2005) and (Pearce, Senis et al. 2004). Many more examples are thoroughly discussed in (Kafri, Levy & Pilpel. 2006). The main source of genetic redundancy is the process of gene duplication which generates multiplicity in gene