Gene sharing and evolution: Joram Piatigorsky Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA
- PDF / 61,377 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 609.449 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 3 Downloads / 172 Views
Book Review Gene Sharing and Evolution Joram Piatigorsky Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, USA; 2007; ISBN: 978-0-674-02341-3; 320 pp; Hardback; £49.95 The Human Genome Sequencing Project achieved a respectable milestone to aid molecular biology and genetic studies; however, much work needs to be done to comprehend the genomic information and its organisation within the genome. The sequencing of additional genomes of closely related species (eg human and chimpanzee, mouse and rat, and Caenorhabditis elegans and Caenorhabditis briggsae), as well as genomes of other species, promises a number of opportunities to trace the evolutionary origins of complex phenotypes and to understand evolution at the molecular level. In this book, Joram Piatigorsky takes readers to a hidden world of genomes and genes, and their encoded polypeptides, and argues that a significant fraction of them is actually multifunctional. Whereas the human ENCODE (Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements) and its sibling modENCODE (Model Organism ENCODE) projects aim to categorise all the functional elements in their targeted genomes, this book suggests that each of those elements may have functions spreading in multiple dimensions. This book is divided into 11 chapters, and contains 40 excellent illustrations embedded into the text and 1,165 references, representing a comprehensive source of original studies and reviews on this topic. The glossary provides a quick way of finding definitions for 73 key terms used throughout the text. The term ‘gene sharing’ means that a polypeptide generated from a specific region of a genome serves at least two distinct molecular functions. This novel concept originated about two decades ago from the work of Piatigorsky and his colleagues, who isolated genes that encode lens structural proteins, the crystallins. Studies of avian and crocodilian lenses first showed that 1-crystallin was similar to the basic metabolic enzyme, lactate dehydrogenase B4; followed by findings that chicken
66
d-crystallin was similar to argininosuccinate lyase and that turtle t-crystallin was similar to a-enolase. When gene identity for the enzyme and crystallin was revealed, both a novel term, ‘gene sharing’, and paradigm emerged (Chapters 1 and 4). More recently, proteins highly expressed in another transparent ocular tissue, the cornea, were linked to the concept of gene sharing (Chapter 5). A respectable number of multifunctional proteins encoded by single copy genes, such as cytochrome c, citrate synthase, serum albumin and thioredoxin, among others, have been identified and are presented in depth in Chapter 6. This book also provides ample evidence that gene sharing relates to nearly every aspect of genome biology, from the regulation of a single gene, the dynamics of the evolutionary process, to protein interaction networks and systems biology. The genome can be viewed as a ‘compendium’ of DNA; specific regions are shared as they encode identical polypeptide coding regions with distinct molecular functions. In addition, specific region
Data Loading...
