Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000 Dec 19;97(26):14433-7. doi:10.1073/pnas.240462997

Seoighe C, Federspiel N, Jones T, Hansen N, Bivolarovic V, Surzycki R, Tamse R, Komp C, Huizar L, Davis RW, Scherer S, Tait E, Shaw DJ, Harris D, Murphy L, Oliver K, Taylor K, Rajandream MA, Barrell BG, Wolfe KH.

Prevalence of small inversions in yeast gene order evolution

Classifies pairs of gene orientations as ”parallel”, “convergent”, “divergent” and “alternative parallel” and studies combinations of these orientations in 298 adjacent gene paris from the S. cerevisiae and the C. albicans genomes, and the number of inversions they imply. “We estimate that about 1,100 single-gene inversions have occurred since the divergence between these species” (divergence happened ~200 million years ago) “Our results suggest that successive random small inversions frequently cause a gene's chromosomal position and orientation to drift during its evolution. This process would alter gene order and orientation without moving any genes very far from their starting points.”