Gene conversion and DNA sequence polymorphism in the sex-determination gene fog-2 and its paralog ftr-1 in Caenorhabditis elegans.

ABSTRACT: Gene conversion, a form of concerted evolution, bears enormous potential to shape the trajectory of sequence and functional divergence of gene paralogs subsequent to duplication events. fog-2, a sex-determination gene unique to Caenorhabditis elegans and implicated in the origin of hermaphroditism in this species, resulted from the duplication of ftr-1, an upstream gene of unknown function. Synonymous sequence divergence in regions of fog-2 and ftr-1 (excluding recent gene conversion tracts) suggests that the duplication occurred 46 million generations ago. Gene conversion between fog-2 and ftr-1 was previously discovered in experimental fog-2 knockout lines of C. elegans, whereby hermaphroditism was restored in mutant obligately outcrossing male-female populations. We analyzed DNA-sequenc

SUBMITTER: Rane HS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3203404 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature