ArticleeLife2019
The meanings of 'function' in biology and the problematic case of de novo gene emergence.
Article in eLife, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 47 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
47 citing papers in PubMed.
- Emergence Biases in Molecular Evolution.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Review
- Evolutionary causes and consequences of gene duplication.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2026Review
- Emergence and evolution of protein-coding de novo genes.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2026Review
- Article
- Actually, what is a gain-of-function mutation?Genetics · 2026Article
- Emergence and Tandem Repeat-Mediated Elongation of a Translated De Novo Open Reading Frame in Human Oncogenic RNA Gene VPS9D1-AS1 (MYU).Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- De Novo Gene Emergence: Summary, Classification, and Challenges of Current Methods.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Review
- DeNoFo: a file format and toolkit for standardized, comparable de novo gene annotation.Bioinformatics (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- High-quality peptide evidence for annotating non-canonical open reading frames as human proteins.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Tacit Creationism Encourages Oversimplified Views of Functions and Dysfunctions.The European journal of neuroscience · 2025Review
- Selecting genes for analysis using historically contingent progress: from RNA changes to protein-protein interactions.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Selecting genes for analysis using historically contingent progress: from RNA changes to protein-protein interactions.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- De Novo Emerged Gene Search in Eukaryotes with DENSE.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- On knowing a gene: A distributional hypothesis of gene function.Cell systems · 2024Review
- Frustration can Limit the Adaptation of Promiscuous Enzymes Through Gene Duplication and Specialisation.Journal of molecular evolution · 2024Article
- In vivo functional phenotypes from a computational epistatic model of evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Coevolutionary Information Captures Catalytic Functions and Reveals Divergent Roles of Terpene Synthase Interdomain Connections.Biochemistry · 2024Article
- Toxin rescue by a random sequence.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- Evaluation of input data modality choices on functional gene embeddings.NAR genomics and bioinformatics · 2023Article
- Gene birth in a model of non-genic adaptation.BMC biology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The word function has many different meanings in molecular biology. Here we explore the use of this word (and derivatives like functional) in research papers about de novo gene birth. Based on an analysis of 20 abstracts we propose a simple lexicon that, we believe, will help scientists and philosophers discuss the meaning of function more clearly.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.