a role for gene duplication and natural variation of gene expression in the evolution of metabolism基因复制的作用和自然变异的进化代谢的基因表达.pdfVIP

A Role for Gene Duplication and Natural Variation of Gene Expression in the Evolution of Metabolism Daniel J. Kliebenstein* Department of Plant Sciences, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America Abstract Background: Most eukaryotic genomes have undergone whole genome duplications during their evolutionary history. Recent studies have shown that the function of these duplicated genes can diverge from the ancestral gene via neo- or sub- functionalization within single genotypes. An additional possibility is that gene duplicates may also undergo partitioning of function among different genotypes of a species leading to genetic differentiation. Finally, the ability of gene duplicates to diverge may be limited by their biological function. Methodology/Principal Findings: To test these hypotheses, I estimated the impact of gene duplication and metabolic function upon intraspecific gene expression variation of segmental and tandem duplicated genes within Arabidopsis thaliana. In all instances, the younger tandem duplicated genes showed higher intraspecific gene expression variation than the average Arabidopsis gene. Surprisingly, the older segmental duplicates also showed evidence of elevated intraspecific gene expression variation albeit typically lower than for the tandem duplicates. The specific biological function of the gene as defined by metabolic pathway also modulated the level of intraspecific gene expression variation. The major energy metabolism and biosynthetic pathways showed decreased variation, suggesting that they are constrained in their ability to accumulate gene expression variation. In contrast, a major herbivory defense pathway showed significantly elevated intraspecific variation suggesting that it may be under pressure to maintain and/or generat