Wednesday, 27th February, 2013, 11.00-12.00

How orphan genes, novel domains and protein modularity help set the stage for genomic novelties and developmental shifts

Over the past years it became clear that many "novel" genes are indeed truly novel since they have not arisen in the wake of gene or whole genome duplications.

I will discuss the mechanisms of novel gene emergence across different taxa. I will also concentrate on the role which gene rearrangements play for the emergence of novel proteins with altered functions that may cause functional shifts and trigger developmental innovations.

Most shockingly, thousands of domain are completely lost along every lineage over several millions of years but only some tens of domains are newly formed. However, these novel domains seem to have a high adaptive value as they rapidly multiply in genomes and seem to confer a high fitness gains since they are mostly related to biotic and abiotic stress responses.

Speaker: Erich Bornberg-Bauer, Molecular Evolution and Bioinformatics Inst., University Muenster, Germany

Room Aula Room CRG (473.10)