Frequent nonallelic gene conversion on the human lineage and its effect on the divergence of gene duplicates

Nonallelic gene conversion (NAGC) is a driver of more than 20 diseases. It is also thought to drive the "concerted evolution" of gene duplicates because it acts to eliminate any differences that accumulate between them. Despite its importance, the parameters that govern NAGC are not well characterized. We developed statistical tools to study NAGC and its consequences for human gene duplicates. We find that the baseline rate of NAGC in humans is 20 times faster than the point mutation rate. Despite this high rate, NAGC has a surprisingly small effect on the average sequence divergence of human duplicates—and concerted evolution is not as pervasive as previously thought.