Frequent nonallelic gene conversion on the human lineage and its effect on the divergence of gene duplicates.

ABSTRACT: Gene conversion is the copying of a genetic sequence from a "donor" region to an "acceptor." In nonallelic gene conversion (NAGC), the donor and the acceptor are at distinct genetic loci. Despite the role NAGC plays in various genetic diseases and the concerted evolution of gene families, the parameters that govern NAGC are not well characterized. Here, we survey duplicate gene families and identify converted tracts in 46% of them. These conversions reflect a large GC bias of NAGC. We develop a sequence evolution model that leverages substantially more information in duplicate sequences than used by previous methods and use it to estimate the parameters that govern NAGC in humans: a mean converted tract length of 250 bp and a probability of [Formula: see text] per generation for a nucleoti

SUBMITTER: Harpak A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5715747 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature