This paper describes six new architecture-altering operations that provide a way to dynamically determine the architecture of a multipart program during a run of genetic programming. The new operations are patterned after the naturally occurring operations of gene duplication and gene deletion and are motivated by Ohno's provocative book Evolution by Means of Gene Duplication. The new operation...

Ticks modulate their hosts' defense responses by secreting a biopharmacopiea of hundreds to thousands of proteins and bioactive chemicals into the feeding site (tick-host interface). These molecules and their functions evolved over millions of years as ticks adapted to blood-feeding, tick lineages diverged, and host-shifts occurred. The evolution of new proteins with new functions is mainly dep...

To systematically estimate the gene duplication events in closely related species, we have to use comparative genomic approaches, either through genomic sequence comparison or comparative genomic hybridization (CGH). Given the scarcity of complete genomic sequences of plant species, in the present study we adopted an array based CGH to investigate gene duplications in the genus Arabidopsis. Fra...

Gene duplication generates genetic novelty and redundancy and is a major mechanism of evolutionary change in bacteria and eukaryotes. To date, however, gene duplication has been reported only rarely in RNA viruses. Using a conservative BLAST approach we systematically screened for the presence of duplicated (i.e., paralogous) proteins in all RNA viruses for which full genome sequences are publi...

Gene duplication is a major source of genetic variation that has been shown to underpin the evolution of a wide range of adaptive traits [1, 2]. For example, duplication or amplification of genes encoding detoxification enzymes has been shown to play an important role in the evolution of insecticide resistance [3-5]. In this context, gene duplication performs an adaptive function as a result of...

A deletion in 15q11.2 involving the SNURF/SNRPN gene is the typical finding in patients with Prader-Willi syndrome. Apart from translocations disrupting this gene, no other mutation types have been described so far. We report a patient in whom a small duplication in exon 1 of the SNURF/SNRPN gene was diagnosed which is predicted to interrupt only SNURF expression. The patient was investigated d...

Polyploidy has been widely appreciated as an important force in the evolution of plant genomes, but now it is recognized as a common phenomenon throughout eukaryotic evolution. Insight into this process has been gained by analyzing the plant, animal, fungal, and recently protozoan genomes that show evidence of whole genome duplication (a transient doubling of the entire gene repertoire of an or...