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Multigene Family

"Multigene Family" is a descriptor in the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus, MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). Descriptors are arranged in a hierarchical structure, which enables searching at various levels of specificity.

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A set of genes descended by duplication and variation from some ancestral gene. Such genes may be clustered together on the same chromosome or dispersed on different chromosomes. Examples of multigene families include those that encode the hemoglobins, immunoglobulins, histocompatibility antigens, actins, tubulins, keratins, collagens, heat shock proteins, salivary glue proteins, chorion proteins, cuticle proteins, yolk proteins, and phaseolins, as well as histones, ribosomal RNA, and transfer RNA genes. The latter three are examples of reiterated genes, where hundreds of identical genes are present in a tandem array. (King & Stanfield, A Dictionary of Genetics, 4th ed)


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This graph shows the total number of publications written about "Multigene Family" by people in this website by year, and whether "Multigene Family" was a major or minor topic of these publications.
Bar chart showing 146 publications over 30 distinct years, with a maximum of 15 publications in 2001
To see the data from this visualization as text, click here.