Systematics of Genes -

    Orthologs - "A collection of genes sharing a common ancestry and typcially performing the same role in different organisms."

Paralogs - "Multiple proteins resulting from gene duplications within an organism are termed "paralogs." Paralogous relationships have been known for several decades: alpha-globin, beta-globin, and myoglobin are classical examples of paralogs that arose from duplications of ancestral globin genes in the vertebrate lineage (3). In recent years, with the explosive increase in available sequence data, we have become aware of the richness of paralogous relationships in all organisms. "

Chimeras - ".. composite proteins consisting of multiple modules ("chimeras") constitute a large proportion of the protein complement of an organism. "

Motifs - The smallest sequence units of protein families are termed "motifs," which are identified as highly similar regions in alignments of protein segments

 

Evolving

References - S. Henikoff, E. A. Greene, S. Pietrokovski, P. Bork, T. K. Attwood, L. Hood
Gene Families: The Taxonomy of Protein Paralogs and Chimeras
Science 24 October 1997; 278 (5338):609 (in Genome Issue:
Building Gene Families; Articles)

This web site is provided for instruction in Botany and Zoology 342

by Kenneth G. Wilson,
Professor of Botany
Miami University
wilsonkg@muohio.edu