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Updated: Aug 17, 2026

Polysome Fractionation and Analysis of Mammalian Translatomes on a Genome-wide Scale
Published on: May 17, 2014
Gene expression evolves faster in narrowly than in broadly expressed mammalian genes
Jing Yang1, Andrew I Su, Wen-Hsiung Li
1Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, USA.
Abstract:
Despite much recent interest, it remains unclear what determines the rate of evolution of gene expression. To study this issue we develop a new measure, called "Expression Conservation Index" (ECI), to quantify the degree of tissue-expression conservation between two homologous genes. Applying this measure to a large set of gene expression data from human and mouse, we show that tissue expression tends to evolve rapidly for genes that are expressed in only a limited number of tissues, whereas tissue expression can be conserved for a long time for genes expressed in a large number of tissues. Therefore, expression breadth is an important determinant for evolutionary conservation of tissue expression. In addition, we find a rapid decrease in ECI with the synonymous divergence between duplicate genes, suggesting fast divergence in tissue expression between duplicate genes.
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