It was once assumed that a count of the number of protein-coding genes in an organism would provide a reasonable estimate of the total number of gene products. This is now known to be incorrect, largely due to the discovery of widespread:

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Alternative splicing allows a single gene to produce multiple protein products, significantly increasing the diversity of proteins that can be generated from a given number of genes. This discovery has shown that the number of protein-coding genes is not a direct indicator of the complexity of an organism's proteome.

It Was Once Assumed That a Count of the Number