[HN Gopher] Scientists uncover key mechanism in evolution: Whole...
___________________________________________________________________
Scientists uncover key mechanism in evolution: Whole-genome
duplication drives
Author : docmechanic
Score : 71 points
Date : 2025-03-29 13:39 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedaily.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedaily.com)
| docmechanic wrote:
| 'Scientists uncovered how whole-genome duplication emerges and
| remains stable over thousands of generations of evolution in the
| lab.'
| tomrod wrote:
| No, the title is accurate as currently state: "Scientists
| uncover key mechanism in evolution: Whole-genome duplication
| drives long-term adaptation"
|
| Evolution is as fascinating as it is predictive. Very neat
| read.
| flobosg wrote:
| Assuming the title was trimmed, I would remove that last
| "drives" since it can be interpreted as a noun.
| docmechanic wrote:
| Yes, I had to trim the title to the character limit. Thanks
| for the tip for next time I run into this.
| twic wrote:
| Especially because there's a thing called a gene drive,
| and i thought this was a corresponding thing for whole
| genome duplication:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive
| flobosg wrote:
| My thoughts exactly!
| docmechanic wrote:
| I agree that the summary I copied and pasted doesn't mention
| the impact on long-term adaptation. The title is a better
| summary than the summary!
| tomrod wrote:
| No harm no foul!
| yarnover wrote:
| It has happened in plants over and over again.
| echelon wrote:
| Gene dose increases in plants lead to bigger vegetables and
| fruiting bodies. We've taken advantage of this during
| domestication of several species.
|
| Gene dose increases in animals lead to total dysfunction and
| death in embryonic development.
| eimrine wrote:
| Dosis sola facit venenum?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| There are species of fish that have gone through whole genome
| duplication.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02299-z#:~:text=P.
| ..
| dekhn wrote:
| dose is such a weird term for "copies"
| flobosg wrote:
| It's quite... historical.
| echelon wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_dosage
|
| Historical-sounding, maybe? It's still used in the
| literature:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32144-z
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48960-4
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10757140/
| dekhn wrote:
| Yeah, when I saw the original comment I tried to find the
| source of the term but wasn't able to find it.
|
| To me it sounds like medical genetics terminology (known
| for terms like "penetrance", "allele", "epistasis",
| "locus") whereas I'm a molecular biologist/biophysicist,
| which has far more precise ways of describing the
| underlying physical model.
| flobosg wrote:
| In bacteria as well!
| kkylin wrote:
| And in yeast there has long been evidence for WGD. See, e.g.,
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4529243/ & references
| therein.
|
| Edit: I posted this without looking at the paper (which is
| about yeast). Doh.
| evrimoztamur wrote:
| Any self-replicating program that's in an environment that's
| degrading it over time, should ideally remember what the 'source
| code' was. It makes sense that it's about where this property
| emerges early on.
| flobosg wrote:
| I just realized that the publication comes from Will Ratcliff's
| group, working on the evolution of multicelullarity. An entry was
| posted here with a podcast featuring him not long ago, in case
| you're curious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43464770
| mmooss wrote:
| The paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08689-6
|
| Tong, K., Datta, S., Cheng, V. et al. Genome duplication in a
| long-term multicellularity evolution experiment. Nature 639,
| 691-699 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08689-6
| pm wrote:
| This is fascinating, but I don't know enough biology to
| understand the concepts at play. Could someone knowledgeable in
| the field explain it further?
| matznerd wrote:
| This is one of the ways we get all of the secondary metabolites
| from plants, most of the compounds in supplements and drugs that
| are active in humans. They come from mutations of the existing
| DNA, then are able to change from there without impacting the
| plant's core functions due to being duplicates:
|
| "Gene duplications drive the recruitment of genes for secondary
| metabolism. Gene copies are gradually modified to create genes
| with specificities and expression patterns adapted to the needs
| of the new pathway in which they are involved. Duplicated genes
| are often in tandem repeats, forming clusters within the plant
| genome. However, in some cases, clusters of nonhomologous genes
| have also been identified as forming a functional unit. The
| selective forces that have caused the establishment of new
| pathways are far from understood and might have changed
| repeatedly during evolution owing to the continuously changing
| environment. Recent data show that the way several classes of
| secondary compounds are scattered among species is attributable
| to independent recruitment and the inactivation of biosynthetic
| enzymes."
|
| https://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science/abstract/S1360-138...
|
| If you want to understand secondary metabolites, which is not the
| "how" do they work part of plant-derived molecules, but the "why"
| do they work?
|
| You can follow this line of research:
|
| "Over recent years, the consensus as to the mechanisms
| responsible for these effects in humans has shifted away from
| polyphenols having direct antioxidant effects and toward their
| modulation of cellular signal transduction pathways. To date,
| little consideration has been given to the question of why,
| rather than how, these plant-derived chemicals might exert these
| effects. Therefore, this review summarizes the evidence
| suggesting that polyphenols beneficially affect human brain
| function and describes the current mechanistic hypotheses
| explaining these effects. It then goes on to describe the
| ecologic roles and potential endogenous signaling functions that
| these ubiquitous phytochemicals play within their home plant and
| discusses whether these functions drive their beneficial effects
| in humans via a process of "cross-kingdom" signaling predicated
| on the many conserved similarities in plant, microbial, and human
| cellular signal transduction pathways."
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S216183132...
|
| The functional aspect of the duplicated DNA goes back to the
| point that humans, insects, and plants are all eukaryotes...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-04-02 23:01 UTC)