Genetic redundancy: new tricks for old genes.
Many crucial components of signal transduction, developmental, and metabolic pathways have functionally redundant copies. Further, these redundancies show surprising evolutionary stability over prolonged time scales. We propose that redundancies are not just archeological leftovers of ancient gene duplications, but rather that synergy arising from feedback between redundant copies may serve as an information processing element that facilitates signal transduction and the control of gene expression.
Kafri
Ran
R
Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA. ran_kafri@hms.harvard.edu
Springer
Michael
M
Pilpel
Yitzhak
Y
D000818:Animals; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D020440:Gene Duplication; D006801:Humans; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways; D015398:Signal Transduction