Inefficient Selection: New Evolutionary Mechanism Accounts For Some Of Human Biological Complexity
A painstaking analysis of thousands of genes and the proteins they encode shows that human beings are biologically complex, at least in part, because of the way humans evolved to cope with redundancies arising from duplicate genes.
"We have found a specific evolutionary mechanism to account for a portion of the intricate biological complexity of our species," said Ariel Fernandez, professor of bioengineering at Rice University. "It is a coping mechanism, a process that enables us to deal with the fitness consequences of inefficient selection. It enables some of our proteins to become more specialized over time, and in turn makes us more complex."
Genomic and proteomic analysis has found a new evolutionary mechanism that accounts for some of the biological complexity of human beings. (Credit: iStockphoto/Liang Zhang)
"We have found a specific evolutionary mechanism to account for a portion of the intricate biological complexity of our species," said Ariel Fernandez, professor of bioengineering at Rice University. "It is a coping mechanism, a process that enables us to deal with the fitness consequences of inefficient selection. It enables some of our proteins to become more specialized over time, and in turn makes us more complex."
