Category Archives: de novo gene evolution
New genes and functional innovation in mammals
Many human genes have counterparts in distant species such as plants or bacteria. This is because they share a common origin, they were invented a long time ago in a primitive cell. However, there are some genes that do not … Continue reading
Filed under de novo gene evolution, gene duplication, mammal, Papers
Our group portrayed at El.lipse
Nov 2016 Tweet
When we fail to detect homologues in other species, is it because they are too divergent or because they do not exist?
The increasing number of genomes available has made it possible to compare the genes and determine in which branch of the phylogenetic tree they are likely to have originated. This has led to the identification of many genes that are … Continue reading
Filed under de novo gene evolution, science, society
“Origins of de novo genes in human and chimpanzee” published in Plos Genetics
Novel genes are continuously emerging during evolution, but what drives this process? We have published a study in PLOS Genetics in which we find that the fortuitous appearance of certain combinations of elements in the genome can lead to the … Continue reading
Filed under de novo gene evolution, lncRNA, Papers, science
Bioinformatics for all
Several volunteers from GRIB explained what bionformatics is to non-experts during the 2015 PRBB open day on Oct 18 2015. Will Blevins and José Luis Villanueva from the Evolutionary Genomics group tried to convey the concept of “orphan genes” using … Continue reading
Filed under de novo gene evolution, education, science, society
Quanta Magazine article on de novo genes
De novo genes are genes that do not arise from gene duplication but from previously non-genic regions in the genome. These genes started to be detected about 10 years ago and have gained increased recognition as an important component of … Continue reading
Filed under de novo gene evolution
How can new genes arise de novo?
Some days ago we presented the results of our most recent work on the evolution of new genes at SMBE 2015. In the talk “The link between pervasive transcription and de novo gene evolution” we discussed the possible mechanisms of … Continue reading
Filed under de novo gene evolution, Uncategorized
“lncRNAs as a source of new peptides” among the most viewed posts in Haldane’s sieve 2014
Our post on the paper “Long non-coding RNAs as a source of new peptides” was among the most viewed in Haldane’s sieve during 2014. Following publication of the preprint in Arxiv and the related post in May 2014, it became … Continue reading
Filed under de novo gene evolution, lncRNA
On homology searches by protein Blast and the characterization of the age of genes (revisited)
This month a paper that investigates the power of sequence similarity searches by BLAST to classify genes into different age classes (phylostratigraphy), Phylostratigraphic bias creates spurious patterns of genome evolution (Moyers and Zhang, Uni Michigan) states that the method substantially … Continue reading
Filed under de novo gene evolution, Papers
“Long non-coding RNAs as a source of new peptides” published in eLife
Abstract Deep transcriptome sequencing has revealed the existence of many transcripts that lack long or conserved open reading frames (ORFs) and which have been termed long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs). The vast majority of lncRNAs are lineage-specific and do not yet … Continue reading
Filed under de novo gene evolution, lncRNA, Papers