Rapid reorganization of the transcriptional regulatory network after genome duplication in yeast.

I study the reorganization of the yeast transcriptional regulatory network after whole-genome duplication (WGD). Individual transcription factors (TFs) were computationally removed from the regulatory network, and the resulting networks were analysed. TF gene pairs that survive in duplicate from WGD show detectable redundancy as a result of that duplication. However, in most other respects, these duplicated TFs are indistinguishable from other TFs in the genome, suggesting that the duplicate TFs produced by WGD were rapidly diverted to distinct functional roles in the regulatory network. Separately, I find that genes targeted by many TFs appear to be preferentially retained in duplicate after WGD, an effect I attribute to selection to maintain dosage balance in the regulatory network after WGD.