Duplication and Divergence: The Evolution of New Genes and Old Ideas

Over 35 years ago, Susumu Ohno stated that gene duplication was the single most important factor in evolution (97). He reiterated this point a few years later in proposing that without duplicated genes the creation of metazoans, vertebrates, and mammals from unicellular organisms would have been impossible. Such big leaps in evolution, he argued, required the creation of new gene loci with previously nonexistent functions (98). Bold statements such as these, combined with his proposal that at least one whole-genome duplication event facilitated the evolution of vertebrates, have made Ohno an icon in the literature on genome evolution. However, discussion on the occurrence and consequences of gene and genome duplication events has a much longer, and often neglected, history. Here we review literature dealing with the occurence and consequences of gene duplication, begining in 1911. We document conceptual and technological advances in gene duplication research from this early research in comparative cytology up to recent research on whole genomes, “transcriptomes,” and “interactomes.”

We have formerly seen that parts many times repeated are eminently liable to vary in number and structure; consequently it is quite probable that natural selection, during the long-continued course of modification, should have seized on a certain number of the primordially similar elements, many times repeated, and have adapted them to the most diverse purposes.

     Charles Darwin, 1859 (23)