Duplicons: Intelligence & Evolution: (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, January 07, 2014, 18:34 (3971 days ago) @ David Turell

We share these mainly with early ancestor great apes, not as much in chimps or bonobos. They may have pushed the big brain development:-"The core duplicon anchors an architecturally complex stretch of DNA, acting as the focal point for a larger block of duplications. Although scientists aren't sure how, the core seems to sweep up neighboring segments of DNA, duplicating the entire stretch and inserting the new copy into a new location on the chromosome. "Then it picks up again and duplicates some of the sequence around it and moves to another new location," Eichler said. "It seems to be an extremely unstable genetic element that provides a template for evolutionary change."
 
It is this process that appears to create new genes: When new duplications are inserted into the genome, they bring together two previously foreign pieces of DNA, which can lead to new functional components, such as proteins. This chaotic mix-and-match approach is different from the traditional model for the creation of a gene, in which an existing gene is duplicated and the copy is free to develop new functions.
 
"This mechanism appears to be seminal in our evolution,"-
https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140102-a-missing-genetic-link-in-human-evolution/