Durand Lab


    Vertebrate Genome Evolution
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Research

How does nature make new genes and do new genes make us what we are? All modern vertebrates share roughly the same set of genes, about twice as many genes as our nearest invertebrate neighbors. This increase in gene number coincides with dramatic morphological innovations, such as large body size, myelanated nerves, good coordination, and better sensing. What events caused this dramatic increase in gene number and were those events responsible for the concomitant organismal evolution?

The classical explanation is that two whole genome duplications occurred early in vertebrate evolution. Some of the resulting copies were lost due to mutation while others evolved new functions, driving vertebrate developmental innovation. Recent analyses of genomic data suggest that the story is more complex: new genes also arise through mixing and matching of sub-genic modules or domains; subsequences that typically exhibit a high degree of sequence conservation, encode structural sub-units that can fold independently and are associated with a particular protein sub-function. Compared with the fly and worm genomes, the human genome is characterized by dramatic expansion of multi-domain gene families with roles in immune response, regulation, signal transduction and the cytoskeleton, suggesting their potential importance in vertebrate developmental and morphological innovations. Taken together, the evidence suggests that duplication and subsequent mutation of genetic material on a range of scales, from domains to the entire genome, played a role in these increases in vertebrate gene number and complexity.

The Durand Lab investigates these phenomena through three types of activities: the development of computational methods for whole genome analysis, application of those methods to genomic data, and the interpretation of the results in light of contemporary gene and organismal function. Current research efforts in the laboratory include

  • statistical tests for recognizing significant patterns in gene organization on chromsomes,
  • the role of large scale duplication in the evolution of insulin,
  • homology identification for multi-domain protein families,
  • tree-based methods for estimating gene duplication times,
  • the role of duplication in pathway evolution.


News stories about our work.