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Polymorphic duplicate genes are important early stages of duplicate gene evolution. Here, the authors characterize polymorphic gene duplicates with respect to dosage, exon–intron structures and allele frequencies for Drosophila and humans.
Transposons are accepted as evolutionary catalysts but how they do so remains less clear. Analyzing 100 animal genomes finds that terminal inverted repeat-type transposable elements catalyze new gene structures and new genes in animals via both transposition-independent and -dependent mechanisms.
Genomic duplications that modify the structure and function of topologically associated domains can deregulate gene expression and cause disease without altering gene copy numbers.
Two new studies provide experimental evidence of how ancient genomic duplications of synaptic genes provided the substrate for diversification that ultimately expanded vertebrate cognitive complexity.