Gene Birth, Death, Modification, Poaching, Crippling, Dimorphism and Culling: The Challenge for Genomics

This brief survey covers the main events in the evolution of eukaryotic genes in broad brush style. It
concentrates on regulatory DNA, an area that has been relatively neglected, and where we believe that the
present case-by-case analysis is likely to be supplemented by more general, genomics-based methods. It is
biased towards immunology, in part because the immune system relies heavily on polymorphism of regulatory
DNA to provide flexibility and in part because of our own field of interest. It gives a central place to recent
work that has shown how analysis of electronic genomes can be used to trace gene duplication and its
consequences. It mentions cellular systems that offer models for the study of evolution of regulatory DNA
on a small scale. It alludes to the unanswered question of how genomes adjust their overall size.

Citation:
Cowell, Linsay G. et al. (2003) ‘Gene Birth, Death, Modification, Poaching, Crippling, Dimorphism and Culling: The Challenge for Genomics’ Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy B69 (4) 447-452.