RESEARCH INTERESTS

Gene duplication and evolution of gene function

The high rate of gene duplication along evolution is accompanied by a high rate of gene loss in a relatively short period after gene duplication (Lynch, M. and Conery, J.C., (2000) The Evolutionary Fate and Consequences of Duplicate Genes. Science 290(10), 1151-1155). Duplicated genes often undergo a period of relaxed selection that enables for potential functional diversification.

So far it is has not been systematically catalogued how the function of gene duplicates correlates to the function of its unduplicated ortholog for a large number of genes, how often gene duplicates have overlapping or evolve new function and whether the function of new gene duplicates is defined by the process that generated them (e.g. single gene versus complete genome duplication event) or if it depends on the context (gene network) within duplicates act.

We are interested in comparing the putative function as implied from whole mount insitu hybridisations of amphioxus genes to those of their vertebrate orthologs. Annotated photographs of a comparative insitu screen of amphioxus and vertebrate duplicated genes will soon appear though this page.

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