The role of transposable elements and DNA damage repair mechanisms in gene amplification and protein domain shuffling in plant genomes

University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.27486v1
Subject Areas
Genomics, Plant Science
Keywords
gene duplications, gene fusion, Non-allelic homologous recombination, non-homologous end joining, extra-chromosomal DNA, protein domain shuffling
Copyright
© 2019 Krasileva
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Krasileva KV. 2019. The role of transposable elements and DNA damage repair mechanisms in gene amplification and protein domain shuffling in plant genomes. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27486v1

Abstract

Plant genomes are shaped by structural variation. Gene-size insertions and among most prominent events and can have significant effects on amplification of gene families as well as facilitate new gene fusions. Transposable elements as well as plant DNA repair machinery have overlapping contributions to these events, and often work in synergy. Activity of transposable elements is often lineage specific and can preferentially affect specific gene families, such as disease resistance genes. Once duplicated, genes themselves can serve templates for additional variation that can arise from non-allelic homologous recombination. Non-homologous DNA repair mechanisms contribute to additional variation and diversify the mechanisms of gene movement, such as through ligation of extra-chromosomal DNA fragments. Genomic processes that generate structural variation can be induced by stress and therefore can provide adaptive potential. This review describes mechanisms that contribute to gene-size structural variation in plants, specifically gene duplication and generation of new plant genes through gene fusion.

Author Comment

This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints. This article is currently under review at another journal. I welcome constructive comments and suggestions on this topic.