Figure 4. Gene duplication can generate “whole gene” and “chimeric gene” paralogs.

(a) When unequal crossing-over (denoted with an “X”) occurs within the intergenic region between two paralogs, one chromosome gains an extra copy of a paralog, while the other chromosome loses one of the paralogs. This is followed by divergence of each paralog (only shown for the chromosome that gained a paralog and denoted as shift in color). A similar process can lead to the creation of the original paralog duplication, if, for example, transposons generate regions of sequence similarity on either side of a gene, thus enabling unequal crossing-over (not shown). (b) The same process can also lead to a chimeric gene duplicate if the crossing over occurs within the intragenic region (most likely within an intronic region).