Tripartite genome of all species

MengPing Long; TaoBo Hu

doi:10.12688/f1000research.8008.1

Tripartite genome of all species

F1000Res. 2016 Feb 19:5:195. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.8008.1. eCollection 2016.

Authors

MengPing Long^#^{1

2}, TaoBo Hu^#^{1

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Division of Life Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR, China.
² Department of Neurology, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China.
³ Applied Genomics Center, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR, China.
⁴ Department of Oncology, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Neutral theory has dominated the molecular evolution field for more than half a century, but it has been severely challenged by the recently emerged Maximum Genetic Diversity (MGD) theory. However, based on our recent work of tripartite human genome architecture, we found that MGD theory may have overlooked the regulatory but variable genomic regions that increase with species complexity. Here we propose a new molecular evolution theory named Increasing Functional Variation (IFV) hypothesis. According to the IFV hypothesis, the genome of all species is divided into three regions that are 'functional and invariable', 'functional and variable' and 'non-functional and variable'. While the 'non-functional and variable' region decreases as species become more complex, the other two regions increase.

Keywords: Evolution; Gene regulation; Genome architecture; Increasing Functional Variation hypothesis; Maximum Genetic Diversity theory; Neutral theory.

Grants and funding

MPL & TBH are recipients of MD-PhD scholarship from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. This work was supported by the grant to TBH from Central South University, China (2282013bks118).