title: Insights into the structural and functional evolution of plant genomes afforded by the nucleotide sequences of chromosomes 2 and 4 of Arabidopsis thaliana.
abstract: The rapidly accumulating genome sequence data from the plant Arabidopsis thaliana allows more detailed analysis of genome content and organisation than ever before possible in plants. The genome shows a surprisingly high level of genetic redundancy, with as many as 75% of gene products showing significant homology to another protein of A. thaliana. Many duplicated genes occur in arrays of conserved order and indicate that A. thaliana is likely to have had a tetraploid ancestor. Analysis of the divergence of duplicated genome segments leads to the prediction of two major modes of plant genome evolution: macro-scale duplication and rearrangement of chromosomes and micro-scale translocations, duplication and loss of individual genes or small groups of genes.
authors.affiliation: John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park, UK. ian.bancroft@bbsrc.ac.uk
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bancroft
mesh_terms: D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D020440:Gene Duplication; D018745:Genome, Plant; D011123:Polyploidy; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D014178:Translocation, Genetic