Bioscience Chapter Database :: 3583 Chapters Now Online

Chapter category: Gene Expression

Clusters of Functionally Related Genes in Eukaryotes, Dosage Balance and Evolvability

This chapter appears in the following book:

The Biology of Genetic Dominance

Edited by: Reiner A. Veitia
ISBN: 1-58706-288-7
» Get more information about this book at landesbioscience.com «

Chapter authors:
Reiner A. Veitia

There is growing genomic evidence on clustering of functionally related genes in eukaryotes. Recent studies in yeast show a correlation between the expression patterns of adjacent and nonadjacent pairs of genes and that a significant proportion of the former are functionally related. A transcriptome-interactome correlation has provided global evidence that yeast genes with similar expression profiles are more likely to encode interacting proteins. Finally, an analysis of several sequenced eukaryotic genomes found that genes involved in the same pathways were clustered. Stoichiometric imbalances in macromolecular complexes can be a source of dominant phenotypes. Here this “dosage balance hypothesis” is extended with the idea that in many instances the physical association of eukaryotic genes might result from a mechanism selecting “modules” which ensure better coregulation, maintain the right stoichiometry of complexes and facilitate evolution by gene duplication.

» Access chapter for $19



Additional chapters from this book:

Lessons from a Genetic Network about the Causes of Dominance

Andreas Wagner

I review recent findings from the stoichiometric analysis of metabolic networks. These findings show that the physiological theory of dominance, which explains dominance in metabolic genes from kineti...

Mathematical Models of Haploinsufficiency

Indrani Bose and Rajesh Karmakar

We describe simple mathematical models of gene expression to explore the possible origins of haploinsufficiency (HI). In a diploid organism, each gene exists in two copies and when one of these is mut...

Phenomenology and Mechanistics of Dominance

Reiner Veitia and Bruno Bost

Here we explore the phenomenological and mechanistic bases of dominance. Dominance can be defined as an operational measure of the deviation of the heterozygote’s observed trait value from its expecte...

Phenotype and Stochastic Gene Expression: Can the Noise Cause Haploinsufficiency?

Anthony N. Gerber, D.L. Cook and S.J. Tapscott

Growing evidence suggests that genes are not expressed at steady state levels, but instead, gene transcription has a stochastic component. We review recent literature concerning stochastic gene expre...

The Basis of Dominance

Athel Cornish-Bowden and Vidyanand Nanjundiah

Dominance is the masking at the level of the phenotype of the presence of one of the two alleles at a diploid locus. We discuss whether it could be an automatic consequence of cellular physiology, a...

Biological Consequences of Dosage Dependent Gene Regulation in Multicellular Eukaryotes

James A. Birchler and Donald L. Auger

Recent evidence from a variety of studies has indicated that gene regulatory mechanisms in multicellular eukaryotes operate in a dosage dependent manner. A consequence of this fact is that new mutat...

From Beanbag Genetics to Feedback Genetics: Bridging the Gap between Regulatory Biology and Quantitative Genetics Theory

Stig W. Omholt

This chapter addresses the abyss that currently exists between quantitative genetics theory and regulatory biology. My claim is that despite the apparent success of quantiative genetics within evoluti...

Stochastic Gene Expression: Dominance, Thresholds and Boundaries

H. Frederik Nijhout

Butterfly color patterns are built as finely tiles mosaics of colored scales, each the product of a single epidermal cell. The overall pattern is composed of a small number of pigments. Each scale a...

Clusters of Functionally Related Genes in Eukaryotes, Dosage Balance and Evolvability

Reiner A. Veitia

There is growing genomic evidence on clustering of functionally related genes in eukaryotes. Recent studies in yeast show a correlation between the expression patterns of adjacent and nonadjacent pa...

Dominance, Nonlinear Developmental Mapping and Developmental Stability

Christian Peter Klingenberg

Developmental stability is the ability of organisms to buffer against the random variation that arises spontaneously as a consequence of stochastic variation in the cellular processes that are invol...


SIGN IN

Email:


Password:


lost password?




[ Home | Authors | Editors | Custom Books | Chapter Reprints | Subscribe | Contact | Biotoons ]