Molecular evolution in the yeast transcriptional regulation network
Annette Evangelisti, University of New Mexico
We analyze the structure of the yeast transcriptional regulation network, as revealed by chromatin immunoprecipitation experiments, and characterize the molecular evolution of both its transcriptional regulators and their target (regulated) genes. We ask how network genes diverge in their transcriptional regulation after duplication. Both loss (subfunctionalization) and gain (neofunctionalization) of transcription factor binding play a role in this divergence, which is often rapid. On one hand, gene duplicates experience a net loss in the number of transcription factors binding to them, indicating the importance of losing transcription factor binding sites after gene duplication. On the other hand, the number of transcription factors that bind to highly diverged duplicates is significantly greater than expected if loss of binding played the only role in the divergence of duplicate genes.
Abstract Author(s): Annette M. Evangelisti and Andreas Wagner