Age-dependent gain of alternative splice forms and biased duplication explain the relation between splicing and duplication

  1. Marc Robinson-Rechavi1
  1. University of Lausanne, Department of Ecology and Evolution, Quartier Sorge, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland; Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

    Abstract

    We analyze here the relation between alternative splicing and gene duplication in light of recent genomic data, with a focus on the human genome. We show that the previously reported negative correlation between level of alternative splicing and family size no longer holds true. We clarify this pattern and show that it is sufficiently explained by two factors. First, genes progressively gain new splice variants with time. The gain is consistent with a selectively relaxed regime, until purifying selection slows it down as aging genes accumulate a large number of variants. Second, we show that duplication does not lead to a loss of splice forms, but rather that genes with low levels of alternative splicing tend to duplicate more frequently. This leads us to reconsider the role of alternative splicing in duplicate retention.

    Footnotes

    • 1 Corresponding author.

      E-mail marc.robinson-rechavi{at}unil.ch.

    • [Supplemental material is available for this article.]

    • Article published online before print. Article, supplemental material, and publication date are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.113803.110.

    • Received August 10, 2010.
    • Accepted December 13, 2010.

    Freely available online through the Genome Research Open Access option.

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