Gene Fusion

Gene fusion is a process by which the whole or parts of two or more distinct genes are juxtaposed and fused into a single gene. Often, a new gene and function can originate in this way. This phenomenon has been broadly observed in organisms ranging from higher eukaryotes to prokaryotes. Recent gene fusions reveal the mechanisms behind this phenomenon. Genome studies reveal the high and incessant incidence of gene fusions in genome evolution.

Keywords: exon shuffling; gene fusion; illegitimate recombination; retroposition; new gene origination

Figure 1. KUA–UEV gene fusion generated a chimerical protein in the human genome. Exon K6 of KUA and U1 of UEV, all intron sequences and an intergenic region are spliced in a read-through transcript.
Figure 2. Origin of jingwei, a chimerical Drosophila gene making a fused protein. The retrosequence of Adh was inserted into the third intron of a duplicate copy of the ymp gene. The downstream exons of ymp become pseudoexons, because the transcription stops at the terminating signal encoded in the Adh-derived exon.
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 Further Reading
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    Long M (2000) A new function evolved from gene fusion. Genome Research 10(11): 1655–1657.
    book Long M (2000) "Protein coding segments: evolution of exon–intron gene structure". Encyclopedia of Life Sciences, http://www.els.net. London, UK: Nature Publishing Group.
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    Pauly M, Kayser I, Schmitz M et al. (1995) Repetitive DNA sequences located in the central region of the human mdr1 (multidrug resistance) gene may account for a gene fusion event during its evolution. Journal of Molecular Evolution 41: 974–978.
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Betrán, Esther(Mar 2008) Gene Fusion. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0005099.pub2]