Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
divergence from metatheria, and that many of these eutherian-specific
CNSs arose from TE sequences.
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While the understanding is still far
from comprehensive, a serious appreciation of the potentially diverse
functional load of CNSs and their contribution to animal evolution is
beginning to take shape.
7. Perspectives
The revolution of sequencing technologies has prompted an avalanche
of molecular data, and computational comparative genomics has
become instrumental for its effective interpretation. Indeed, as the lat-
est explosion of metagenomics data from environmental sampling
reveals, there is still a vast reservoir of biological diversity to be explored.
Evolution appears to proceed through a succession of stochastic events
that explore the available opportunities, and thus it is important to keep
in mind that many observable features, including biological complexity
in general, may arise by chance rather than through positive selection.
Dobzhansky's famous thesis that “nothing in biology makes sense
except in the light of evolution” has now been extended by Lynch to
“nothing in evolution makes sense except in light of population genetics”,
and his topic on the origins of genome architecture would make excel-
lent further reading.
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