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Updated: Aug 18, 2026

Using the E1A Minigene Tool to Study mRNA Splicing Changes
Published on: April 22, 2021
Alternative splicing and gene duplication are inversely correlated evolutionary mechanisms
Naama M Kopelman1, Doron Lancet, Itai Yanai
1Department of Molecular Genetics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
Abstract:
Gene duplication and alternative splicing are distinct evolutionary mechanisms that provide the raw material for new biological functions. We explored their relationships in human and mouse and found an inverse correlation between the size of a gene's family and its use of alternatively spliced isoforms. A cross-organism analysis suggests that selection for genome-wide genic proliferation might be interchangeably met by either evolutionary mechanism.
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