RT Journal
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
JF Genome Research 
JO Genome Research 
YR 2006 
FD January 01 
VO 16 
IS 1 
SP 37 
OP 44 
DO 10.1101/gr.4145906 
UL http://genome.cshlp.org/content/16/1/37.abstract 
AB 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.