Gene duplication and the adaptive evolution of a classic genetic switch

Chris Todd Hittinger and Sean B. Carroll ()
Additional contact information
Chris Todd Hittinger: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Laboratory of Genetics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1525 Linden Drive, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA
Sean B. Carroll: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Laboratory of Genetics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1525 Linden Drive, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA

Nature, 2007, vol. 449, issue 7163, 677-681

Abstract: Abstract How gene duplication and divergence contribute to genetic novelty and adaptation has been of intense interest, but experimental evidence has been limited. The genetic switch controlling the yeast galactose use pathway includes two paralogous genes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae that encode a co-inducer (GAL3) and a galactokinase (GAL1). These paralogues arose from a single bifunctional ancestral gene as is still present in Kluyveromyces lactis. To determine which evolutionary processes shaped the evolution of the two paralogues, here we assess the effects of precise replacement of coding and non-coding sequences on organismal fitness. We suggest that duplication of the ancestral bifunctional gene allowed for the resolution of an adaptive conflict between the transcriptional regulation of the two gene functions. After duplication, previously disfavoured binding site configurations evolved that divided the regulation of the ancestral gene into two specialized genes, one of which ultimately became one of the most tightly regulated genes in the genome.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06151 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:449:y:2007:i:7163:d:10.1038_nature06151

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature06151

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().