Recombination facilitates neofunctionalization of duplicate genes via originalization

Background: Recently originalization was proposed to be an effective way of duplicate-gene preservation, in which recombination provokes the high frequency of original (or wild-type) allele on both duplicated loci. Because the high frequency of wild-type allele might drive the arising and accumulating of advantageous mutation, it is hypothesized that recombination might enlarge the probability of neofunctionalization (P-neo) of duplicate genes. In this article this hypothesis has been tested theoretically. Results: Results show that through originalization recombination might not only shorten mean time to neofunctionalizaiton, but also enlarge P-neo. Conclusions: Therefore, recombination might facilitate neofunctionalization via originalization. Several extensive applications of these results on genomic evolution have been discussed: 1. Time to nonfunctionalization can be much longer than a few million generations expected before; 2. Homogenization on duplicated loci results from not only gene conversion, but also originalization; 3. Although the rate of advantageous mutation is much small compared with that of degenerative mutation, P-neo cannot be expected to be small.