multigenen.adj.

1953 E. O. Dodson in Evolution 7 387/1 The relatively few kinds of genes which they [sc. bacteria] possess are probably all duplicated several times and scattered at random through the cell, so that both daughter cells are almost certain to contain genes of every kind. These might be called multigenes.

1968 Amer. Jrnl. Bot. 55 612/1 The great majority of these [characters] are controlled by multigenes.

1981 Q. Rev. Biol. 56 334/1 He has shown that if unequal crossing-over occurs occasionally among multigenes, a high homology of nucleotide sequences among them may be generated.

2000 Molecular Biol. & Evol. 17 (O.E.D. Archive) 601 In order to determine evolutionary changes in gene regulation..in a multigene family, the amylase multigenes were characterized in Drosophila kikkawai and its sibling species.

1954 Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 40 361 There are two hypotheses which would attribute these data to the behavior of Mendelian genes: (1) the hypothesis of resistance controlled by a single gene linked to mating type..; and (2) a multigene hypothesis.

1959 New Biol. 29 69 Most of the red cell antigens are due to the action of single genes or apparently so, whereas other inherited characters may be the result of multigene action, e.g. skin colour, skeletal shape.

1970 Science 17 Apr. 333/3 Evolution in a multigene system provides, through frequent gene duplication, an extremely rapid and flexible response to the environment.

1976 New Phytologist 77 397 Any attempt to introduce effective multigene resistance into cultivated types may well be accompanied by commercially undesirable characters.

2000 Leukemia 14 1174 Cancer is a multi-gene disease.

2001 Molec. Phylogenetics & Evol. 21 167 Absence of the intron in seven angiosperms and Welwitschia is likely due to seven independent losses when evaluated against the recently published multigene phylogenies.

1972 Federation Proc. (Federation Amer. Soc. Exper. Biol.) 31 184/1 Another coevolution model that permits diversity in the multigene family has been proposed.

1976 Biochem. Genetics 14 477 The antibody gene families are the only well-documented examples of a complex informational multigene family... A multigene family is defined as closely linked clusters of genes whose individual members exhibit sequence homology and carry out related or overlapping functions.

1991 D. J. Weatherall New Genetics & Clin. Practice (ed. 3) iii. 55 Many human genes are organised in families. A group of homologous genes with similar functions is called a multigene family. The more grandiose title of supergene family has been used to describe sets of multigene families and single-copy genes of common ancestry.

2001 New Scientist 28 Apr. 93 (advt.) A three year postdoctoral position is available..to take a functional genomics approach to the multigene family of Group 1 glycosyltransferases of Arabidopsis.