For example, genetic redundancy describes the situation where two or more genes have overlapping functions and can either fully or partially substitute for each other (Thomas 1993; Wagner 1999, 2005).
Finally, it has been shown that Id proteins often have overlapping functions and can compensate for each other.
Potentially both Ngly1p and Engase1p could give rise to fOS in mammalian cells and could have overlapping functions.
We postulate that MMP-2 and MMP-3 have overlapping functions during metamorphosis since they are more related to each other than to MMP-1.
Very recently they have been shown to have overlapping functions in adhesion of cells in the developing leg imaginal disc [14].
OT and AVP have overlapping functions in part mediated by mutual actions on their respective receptors [11] [15], possibly based on receptor affinities [16].
It is possible that sept9a transcripts have overlapping functions, and that over-expression of only sept9a_tv1 cannot compensate for the loss of multiple transcripts.
Hes1 can heterodimerize with Hey1 to effect strong transcriptional repression and Hes1, Hes3 and Hes5 are known to have overlapping functions in the developing nervous system, uncovered by analysis of compound null embryos [31], [32].
Collectively, our results demonstrate that F. tularensis possesses a variety of means to compensate for loss of major oxidative stress-combating factors and that the important enzymes have overlapping functions.
RNAi knockdown of pairwise combinations of tba-1, tba-2, tbb-1 and tbb-2 and analysis of deletion alleles demonstrated that each set of tubulins have overlapping functions for embryonic viability [36] [37].
Recently, Retting et al. showed that the complete loss of Smad1 and Smad5 in chondrocytes leads to a severe chondrodysplasia and that both mediators have overlapping functions in the developing growth plate.
