The phrase "a complementary loss" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in contexts where you are discussing losses that balance or enhance each other, often in financial or strategic discussions.
Example: "The company reported a complementary loss that offset the gains from its other investments, resulting in a stable overall financial position."
Alternatives: "a balancing loss" or "an offsetting loss".
This functional subdivision might be promoted by positive selection [ 35, 36] or be the result of the accumulation of degenerative mutations (i.e., causing a complementary loss of function; the subfunctionalization model) [ 37].
The partitioning process is considered to be a subfunctionalization because structural changes in the poplar genes indicated that after duplication a complementary loss of subfunctions of the ancestral chimeric gene occurred in its two daughter genes.
Since the shifts in the evolutionary rate (detected as type I functional divergence) occurred in different and complementary positions of each duplicated pair, this would point to some functional subdivision, perhaps with a complementary loss (or relaxation) of function at different protein domains.
Indeed, it may be that gain of a gene expression domain (e.g., time in development or tissue where a gene is expressed) shows a greater mutational opportunity than complementary loss of expression domains, and this has indeed been observed among duplicates retained after the teleost whole-genome duplication event (e.g., Østbye et al. 2001).
A recent study showed that the complementary loss and/or gain of epistatic interaction after gene duplication occurred asymmetrically between duplicate gene pairs (VanderSluis et al. 2010).
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Thus, the evolution of genetic redundancy in human and in other higher eukaryotes is enabled by subfunctionalization, a preservation process driven by mildly degenerative mutations that cause complementary loss of subfunctions in different gene copies.
The same is true for complementary loss of different tissue-specific regulatory elements between the two gene copies or differential loss of interaction at distinct binding sites on the protein surface (Hughes 1994; Force et al. 1999; Liu and Adams 2010).
The differential expression patterns of Pgi-1 and Pgi-2 support the concept of subfunctionalization [ 2, 3], which is the complementary loss of subsets in the expression organs of the ancestral gene.
Driven essentially by random genetic drift, subfunctionalization has been identified as a possible non-adaptive mechanism for the retention of duplicate genes in small-population species, where widespread deleterious mutations are likely to cause complementary loss of subfunctions across gene copies.
Subfunctionalization involves complementary loss and retention of individually acting subfunctions between the gene copies, leading to the need of retaining both, so that all essential ancestral functions of the gene are conserved between the duplicate pair (Hughes 1994; Force et al. 1999).
