BIOLOGY 1114 Lecture Notes - Lecture 31: Homeotic Gene, Pax Genes, Gene Duplication

• School: Ohio State University
• Department: Biology
• Course: BIOLOGY 1114
• Professor: James Chiucchi

Document Summary

Developmental biology is an old field, but taken off recently due to genetic research. "blueprint of the blueprint: some tell the cells of the fly when & where to start building wings, bigger questions like "will you develop legs?" Some flies (homeotic mutants) would develop legs where antenna should form: homeotic gene "antennapedia" controls formation of legs, discovery of gene that controlled development of parts, hox genes code for distribution of thorax of the fly. Rebember: variants in regulatory genes still arise through random mutation. Selection still acts to shape effects of mutation in terms of fitness and frequency within population. Gene duplication: most important source of new genes, genetic variation, gene is duplicated, extra copy, error in crossing over or meiosis, usually very negative. Salamanders can become triploid, extra copy of entire genome, and survive. Consequences of gene duplication: you need one working copy of genes.