Contact: Daniel Kane
dbkane@ucsd.edu
858-534-3262
University of California - San Diego

Nonrandom distribution of sequence divergence

Caption: Nonrandom distribution of sequence divergence. The distribution of sequence divergence between ancestral and derivative loci is shown as a function of the location of duplication blocks in the human genome. The authors found 20 of 437 duplication blocks that significantly depart from a continuous genomic duplication model. Eighteen blocks suggest a preponderance of evolutionary younger events (red) and two duplication blocks suggest that duplication activity occurred and then ceased; (green) The effect predominates for particular chromosomes (for example, chr2, chr4, chr5, chr9, chr16 and chrY). The researchers, including UC San Diego’s Pavel Pevzner, tracked down the ancestral origin of more than two thirds of the long DNA duplications in the human genome known as “segmental duplications” and published their results in Nature Genetics.

Credit: Nature Genetics

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