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. 2002 Dec;3(6):488–493. doi: 10.1002/cfg.214

Correct Assignment of Homology is Crucial When Genomics Meets Molecular Evolution

Mohamed Zouine 1,2,✉, Quentin Sculo 2, Bernard Labedan 2,3
PMCID: PMC2448416  PMID: 18629254

Abstract

Pertinent evolutionary studies are based on a correct use of homology terms such as paralogues, metalogues and orthologues. Such crucial concepts have been applied to intragenomic and intergenomic analyses. A further requisite is a proper definition of what is a structural segment of homology. Such segments are called modules to reflect that they play a role in the mechanism of combinational construction of a gene from ready-made basic components. Since identifying a module is operationally equivalent to determining the ancestor to this gene segment, it becomes possible to track back protein history and genome evolution. Such studies underline the importance of two fundamental processes, gene duplication and gene fusion. Moreover, grouping the closest orthologues in families is a pertinent way to reconstruct a genomic tree for all available prokaryotes.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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