PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Nagylaki, Thomas
AU  - Petes, Thomas D.
TI  - INTRACHROMOSOMAL GENE CONVERSION AND THE MAINTENANCE OF SEQUENCE HOMOGENEITY AMONG REPEATED GENES
DP  - 1982 Feb 01
TA  - Genetics
PG  - 315--337
VI  - 100
IP  - 2
4099  - http://www.genetics.org/content/100/2/315.short
4100  - http://www.genetics.org/content/100/2/315.full
SO  - Genetics1982 Feb 01; 100
AB  - Intrachromosomal gene conversion is the non-reciprocal transfer of information between a pair of repeated genes on a single chromosome. This process produces eventual sequence homogeneity within a family of repeated genes. An evolutionary model for a single chromosome lineage was formulated and analyzed. Expressions were derived for the fixation probability, mean time to fixation or loss, and mean conditional fixation time for a variant repeat with an arbitrary initial frequency. It was shown that a small conversional advantage or disadvantage for the variant repeat (higher or lower probability of producing two variant genes by conversion than two wild-type genes) can have a dramatic effect on the probability of fixation. The results imply that intrachromosomal gene conversion can act sufficiently rapidly to be an important mechanism for maintaining sequence homogeneity among repeated genes.