“We found that the Volvox mating locus is about five times bigger than that of Chlamydomonas,” says postdoctoral researcher and co-first author Patrick Ferris, Ph.D. “We wanted to understand the evolutionary basis of this. How did it happen? And where did these new genes come from?”To trace the origin of the added genes, the team looked to see if they could also find them in Chlamydomonas. “We found that although some of the mating locus genes in Volvox are completely new, many of them have counterparts in Chlamydomonas that are near the mating locus,” explains co-first author Bradley Olson, Ph.D.
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