Abstract:

How organismal complexity is achieved is a fundamental biological issue. The surprising revelation that complex eukaryotes have fewer than expected genes presents an important challenge for deciphering how organisms achieve complexity. The genome size and the gene number do not necessarily correlate in a consistent manner with the perceived organismal complexity. In this review, we focus on known molecular mechanisms that increase genetic complexity at the molecular and functional levels, and discuss features that have likely contributed to organismal complexity.

Keywords: TATA-binding protein (TBP); bacterial operons; ubiquitin; transcriptome; Somatic recombination; Polyadenylation

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.2174/138920206777304669

Affiliations: 1: Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Campus Box 347, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.