TY  - JOUR
A1  - Parra, Genís
A1  - Reymond, Alexandre
A1  - Dabbouseh, Noura
A1  - Dermitzakis, Emmanouil T.
A1  - Castelo, Robert
A1  - Thomson, Timothy M.
A1  - Antonarakis, Stylianos E.
A1  - Guigó, Roderic
T1  - Tandem chimerism as a means to increase protein complexity in the human genome
Y1  - 2006/01/01 
JF  - Genome Research 
JO  - Genome Research 
SP  - 37 
EP  - 44 
DO  - 10.1101/gr.4145906 
VL  - 16 
IS  - 1 
UR  - http://genome.cshlp.org/content/16/1/37.abstract 
N2  - The “one-gene, one-protein” rule, coined by Beadle and Tatum, has been fundamental to molecular biology. The rule implies that the genetic complexity of an organism depends essentially on its gene number. The discovery, however, that alternative gene splicing and transcription are widespread phenomena dramatically altered our understanding of the genetic complexity of higher eukaryotic organisms; in these, a limited number of genes may potentially encode a much larger number of proteins. Here we investigate yet another phenomenon that may contribute to generate additional protein diversity. Indeed, by relying on both computational and experimental analysis, we estimate that at least 4%–5% of the tandem gene pairs in the human genome can be eventually transcribed into a single RNA sequence encoding a putative chimeric protein. While the functional significance of most of these chimeric transcripts remains to be determined, we provide strong evidence that this phenomenon does not correspond to mere technical artifacts and that it is a common mechanism with the potential of generating hundreds of additional proteins in the human genome. 
ER  -