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Evolution's recipe book: How ‘copy paste’ err - EurekAlert


A series of whole genome and gene duplication events that go back hundreds of millions of years have laid the foundations for tissue-specific gene expression, according to a new study in the journal&nbsp;<em>Nature Ecology and Evolution</em>. The&nbsp;&lsquo;copy paste&rsquo; errors allowed animals to keep one copy of their genome or genes for fundamental functions, while the second copy could be used as raw material for evolutionary innovation. Events like these, at varying degrees of scale, occurred constantly throughout the bilaterian evolutionary tree and enabled traits and behaviours as diverse as insect flight, octopus camouflage and human cognition.

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