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Science 19 November 2004:
Vol. 306. no. 5700, p. 1255
DOI: 10.1126/science.306.5700.1255m
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Gene duplication is thought to play a significant role in the evolution genomic novelty, yet the rate of gene duplication is still unclear. Previous estimates of the rate of origin of new gene duplicates using the molecular clock model are very high--about one event per billion years. Gao and Innan (p. 1367) compare the genomes of six closely related yeast species and Saccharomyces cerevisiae to calculate the rate of gene duplication without reliance on the molecular clock model and taking into account gene conversion, or the concerted evolution of duplicate genes (which would confound clock based estimates). The new estimate for the rate of gene duplication is two orders of magnitude lower, about 0.01 to 0.06 duplications per billion years.




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