title: Nested genes and increasing organizational complexity of metazoan genomes.
abstract: The most common form of protein-coding gene overlap in eukaryotes is a simple nested structure, whereby one gene is embedded in an intron of another. Analysis of nested protein-coding genes in vertebrates, fruit flies and nematodes revealed substantially higher rates of evolutionary gains than losses. The accumulation of nested gene structures could not be attributed to any obvious functional relationships between the genes involved and represents an increase of the organizational complexity of animal genomes via a neutral process.
authors.affiliation: Center for Computational Medicine and Biology and the Life Sciences Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
authors.forename: Raquel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Assis
authors.forename: Alexey S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Kondrashov
authors.forename: Eugene V
authors.initials: EV
authors.lastname: Koonin
authors.forename: Fyodor A
authors.initials: FA
authors.lastname: Kondrashov
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D016678:Genome / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D032041:Nested Genes / Q000502:physiology*; D010802:Phylogeny
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