Chapter 17.3, Problem 2R

Summary Introduction

To review:

The evolutionary importance of gene families

Introduction:

The prokaryotic genome is small and compact as it contains only protein-coding genes but, the eukaryotic genome is large and complex as it contains a coding region, noncoding region, and regulatory sequences. The prokaryotic genome is haploid while half of all protein-coding genes of eukaryotes have a single copy and other protein-coding genes have multiple copies. Gene duplications have resulted in multiple copies of the same gene and because of separate mutation in different gene copies, gene families arise.