The power-law distribution of gene family size is driven by the pseudogenisation rate's heterogeneity between gene families

Genome sequencing has shown that the number of homologous gene families of a given size declines rapidly with family size. A power-law has been shown to provide the best mathematical description of this relationship. However, it remains unclear what evolutionary forces drive this observation. We use models of gene duplication, pseudogenisation and accumulation of replacement substitutions, which have been validated and parameterised using genomic data, to build a model of homologous gene evolution. We use this model to simulate the evolution of the distribution of gene family size and show that the power-law distribution is driven by the pseudogenisation rate's heterogeneity across gene families and its correlation within families. Moreover, we show that gene duplication and pseudogenisation are necessary and sufficient for the emergence of the power-law. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.