Marina Brasó-Vives, Ferdinand Marlétaz, Amina Echchiki, Federica Mantica, Rafael D Acemel, José L Gómez-Skarmeta, Diego A Hartasánchez, Lorlane Le Targa, Pierre Pontarotti, Juan J Tena, Ignacio Maeso, Hector Escriva, Manuel Irimia, Marc Robinson-Rechavi
BACKGROUND: Amphioxus are non-vertebrate chordates characterized by a slow morphological and molecular evolution. They share the basic chordate body-plan and genome organization with vertebrates but lack their 2R whole-genome duplications and their developmental complexity. For these reasons, amphioxus are frequently used as an outgroup to study vertebrate genome evolution and Evo-Devo. Aside from whole-genome duplications, genes continuously duplicate on a smaller scale. Small-scale duplicated genes can be found in both amphioxus and vertebrate genomes, while only the vertebrate genomes have duplicated genes product of their 2R whole-genome duplications...
November 18, 2022: Genome Biology