Genes that have roles in the same biological pathways change
their rate of evolution in parallel, a finding that could be used to discover
their functions, said a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh School of
Medicine in the February issue of GENETICS.
Humans have nearly 21,000 genes that make as many proteins,
but the functions of most of those genes have not been fully determined, said
lead investigator Nathan Clark, Ph.D., assistant professor of computational and
systems biology at the Pitt School of Medicine. Knowing what a particular gene
does could help unravel the workings of the body, foster understanding of
disease processes and identify targets for new drugs.