Gene and genome evolution

Yves Van de Peer

Bioinformatics research

Detailed analyses of the genomes of several model organisms revealed that gene duplication have played a prominent role in the evolutionary history of many eukaryotes. In addition, many genomes show traces of ancient whole genome duplications. Evidence for large-scale gene duplication or entire genome duplication events often comes from the detection of block or segmental duplications. However, the detection of segmental duplications in genomes is not self-evident. We have developed dedicated software that tries to find colinearity between and within genomes. Apart from looking for evidence for such large-scale gene duplication events, we also try to study the consequences of these events for biological evolution. Other areas of interest are genome evolution in general, the functional divergence of genes, (evolution of) regulation and evolutionary robotics.

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