Science News


category archive listing Category Archives: Genetics

Lancelet genome shows how genes quadrupled during vertebrate evolution

The newly sequenced genome of a dainty, quill-like sea creature called a lancelet provides the best evidence yet that vertebrates evolved over the past 550 million years through a four-fold duplication of the genes of more primitive ancestors.
The late geneticist Susumu Ohno argued in 1970 that gene duplication was the most important force in the [...]