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Evaluating dosage compensation as a cause of duplicate gene retention in Paramecium tetraurelia

Timothy Hughes1, Diana Ekman2, Himanshu Ardawatia1,2, Arne Elofsson2 and David A Liberles3*

Author Affiliations

1 Computational Biology Unit, Bergen Center for Computational Science, University of Bergen, 5020 Bergen, Norway

2 Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Stockholm University, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden

3 Department of Molecular Biology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA

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Genome Biology 2007, 8:213 doi:10.1186/gb-2007-8-5-213

Published: 22 May 2007

Abstract

The high retention of duplicate genes in the genome of Paramecium tetraurelia has led to the hypothesis that most of the retained genes have persisted because of constraints due to gene dosage. This and other possible mechanisms are discussed in the light of expectations from population genetics and systems biology.