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Crotamine

Submitted by rmmcdonald on Fri, 11/22/2019 - 10:17

Crotamine likely evolved from beta defensin genes through a combination of gene duplication, regulatory mutation, and coding sequence mutation. Gene duplication must have occurred first because the initial gene, beta defensin, is a gene critical to an organism's function therefore that gene must be conserved. When an ancestor had two copies of the beta defensin gene, one of the copies then had a spontaneous mutation in the regulatory sequence, expressing beta defensin in the fangs at higher concentration. This evolutionary step might have happened before, after, or at the same time as a series of mutations in the coding sequence of the copied beta defensin gene in order to code for a poisonous protein instead.

 

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Comments

Maybe tweak the first sentence so it pertains a bit more to the topic of the whole paragraph!

 

Make a new sentence after "gene critical to an organism's function therefore that gene must be conserved"

I think you should introduce crotamine and why it is significant before you say where it has evolved from