Is the Term ‘Functional Redundancy’ Functionally Redundant?
Is the Term ‘Functional Redundancy’ Functionally Redundant? Abstract When no phenotypic effects can be detected following knock-out experiments, genes are typically described as being ‘functionally redundant’. Examples of this so-called functional redundancy are ubiquitous in the scientific literature, across all kingdoms of life. However, functional redundancy remains a challenge to explain as redundant genes should not be maintainable by natural selection, and thus their persistence […]