{
  "id": 5428121,
  "title": "Evolutionary replay of duplicate-gene retention across independent whole-genome duplications",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/03/evolutionary-replay-of-duplicate-gene-retention-across-independent",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-09-03T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.29.748011v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Whole-genome duplication presents ancient gene lineages with a choice: to retain both copies or revert to a single-copy state. It is uncertain whether the lineage's identity holds any information about this choice across separate duplications. Researchers have now placed the post-duplication retention within a common ancestral-lineage coordinate and compared the percentile ranks within each event, without the need for every lineage to be observed in every event. Three separate angiosperm whole-genome duplications exhibited a reproducible replay of gene-lineage retention, with a global fixed-rank effect (T_replay = 0.210) and a bootstrap 95% confidence interval of 0.172-0.248. The signal also transferred among events that were not included in the analysis, suggesting that the information is transferable. A reference-panel score, frozen before the observation of the target outcome, was able to predict retention in Apple/Pear and YeastWGD. However, this correlation was not consistently observed in teleost genome duplications, indicating some heterogeneity among events. Despite this, a stable-complex proxy for conserved dosage constraint did not detect stronger transfer, leaving post-duplication evolution with a reproducible and potentially transferable gene-lineage-associated component within a highly variable event-specific framework.",
  "summary": "Whole-genome duplication repeatedly presents ancestral gene lineages with an equivalent evolutionary choice: retain both descendants or return towards single-copy representation. Whether lineage identity carries information about that choice across independent duplications remains unresolved. We placed post-duplication retention in a common ancestral-lineage coordinate and compared within-event…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}