tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post9091691505162560456..comments2024-02-29T03:57:00.088-05:00Comments on The Mermaid's Tale: New genes, old functionAnne Buchananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09212151396672651221noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-31467440916380675452012-04-17T07:03:13.861-04:002012-04-17T07:03:13.861-04:00This is a very good contribution, and thanks very ...This is a very good contribution, and thanks very much for pointing it out! It's a sign of the times, perhaps, that I subscribe to TiGs but didn't notice this in the frenzied pass-through of what's in my daily mailbox.<br /><br />But this paper merits deeper consideration, in that it relates to other ideas, like Ohno's original 'evolution by gene duplication'.<br /><br />Normally, that idea is so powerful that it's been hard to find truly orphan genes. I've been involved in that process, when I was skeptical about an enamel-forming gene, amelogenin, that seemed to be without a family.<br /><br />As it turned out, thanks to some serendipidity and the phenomenally good work by my associate here, Kazz Kawasaki, amelogenin is part of a very old, and very important family of biomineralization-related genes.<br /><br />The point there is that the nature of the protein functions coded by these genes made homology searches very difficult. But once we (i.e., Kazz) figured this out, family relationships were quickly found.<br /><br />If well-established genes do exist, then where did then come from if they are not members of a wider (and older) gene family? And if they've been around a while how could they not have proliferated into a family?<br /><br />I'm jumping the gun here, because I've now only looked at the abstract of this paper. But my prediction is that either there are gene families (even if taxonomically restricted, which would not be hard to explain) rather than orphan singletons, and/or there must be homologs, or else there must at least be exon homologs,....or else we have some explaining to do.Ken Weisshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02049713123559138421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-69112552733509066702012-04-17T04:39:16.018-04:002012-04-17T04:39:16.018-04:00These amylases are merely the tip of the iceberg. ...These amylases are merely the tip of the iceberg. Unique genes, often known as "orphans", "ORFans" or "taxomonically restricted genes" are being found in every new genome sequence. For reviews see: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168952509001450<br />http://mic.sgmjournals.org/content/151/8/2499.short<br />http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v12/n10/full/nrg3053.html<br />http://www.biology-direct.com/content/6/1/34Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com