Insights into the evolution of the snail superfamily from metazoan wide molecular phylogenies and expression data in annelids.

ABSTRACT:

Background

An important issue concerning the evolution of duplicated genes is to understand why paralogous genes are retained in a genome even though the most likely fate for a redundant duplicated gene is nonfunctionalization and thereby its elimination. Here we study a complex superfamily generated by gene duplications, the snail related genes that play key roles during animal development. We investigate the evolutionary history of these genes by genomic, phylogenetic, and expression data studies.

Results

We systematically retrieved the full complement of snail related genes in several sequenced genomes. Through phylogenetic analysis, we found that the snail superfamily is composed of three ancestral families, snail, scratchA and scratchB. Analyses of the organization of t

SUBMITTER: Kerner P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2688512 | biostudies-literature | 2009 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature