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A comment on DNA Mutations Do Not Occur Randomly – Discovery Transforms Our View of Evolution. Parent comment

Re:DNA Mutations Do Not Occur Randomly – Discovery Transform... by gus_massa on Saturday January 29, 2022 @06:34PM (#30131756)
Are there overlapping genes in plants or animals?

I remember about overlapping genes in bacteriophages, but I though is was a weird trick because a big part of the bacteriophages is the DNA.

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Re:DNA Mutations Do Not Occur Randomly – Discovery Transform... by dekhn on Sunday January 30, 2022 @10:09AM (#30137810)
yes, yeast have them. I think all organisms have some number of overlapping genes.
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Re:DNA Mutations Do Not Occur Randomly – Discovery Transform... by gus_massa on Monday January 31, 2022 @10:44AM (#30149208)
Very interesting! I found this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overlapping_gene Do you have a better link? [Armchair biologist here :) .]
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Re:DNA Mutations Do Not Occur Randomly – Discovery Transform... by dekhn on Monday January 31, 2022 @11:47AM (#30150064)
That's a great summary. If you want to go further, I think it's only really addressed in the literature and not much in textbooks.

The one interesting bit that I studied/researched and attempted to publish (no luck) was the observation that organisms that have RNAi, a process by which cells detect double-stranded RNA inside and eliminate it (likely a virus), tend to have fewer overlapping genes. When two different overlapping genes are transcribed to mRNA, they can form duplexes that kinda sorta look like viral RNA and get taken out by the RNAi surveillance system, even though they're legit transcripts.

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