Accumulation of CTCF-binding sites drives expression divergence between tandemly duplicated genes in humans.

ABSTRACT:

Background

During eukaryotic genome evolution, tandem gene duplication is the most frequent event giving rise to clustered gene families. However, how expression divergence between tandemly duplicated genes has emerged and maintained remain unclear. In particular, it is unknown if epigenetic regulators have been involved in the process.

Results

We demonstrate that CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF), the master epigenetic regulator and the only known insulator protein in humans, has played a predominant role in generating divergence in both expression profiles and expression levels between adjacent paralogs in the human genome. This phenomenon was not observed for non-paralogous adjacent genes. After tandem duplication events, CTCF-binding sites gradually accumulate between paralogs

SUBMITTER: Liao BY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4046690 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature