How Duplicate Genes Shape Evolution

Gene duplication helps drive evolution by creating extra copies of DNA that can change over time. The seminal work of Ohno in 1970 helped popularize this idea. DNA sequence comparisons show that many genes in bacteria, archaebacteria, and eukaryotes came from duplication and later divergence, which makes this process importa...

Gene duplication is a process where a DNA region coding for a gene duplicates, making additional copies of itself within the same genome. These duplicated copies of the gene - called paralogs can later mutate and diverge in one of the following ways.

The first is formation of the pseudogenes. Here, one of the gene paralogs may acquire del...