duplications

Duplications refer to the act or result of creating an identical copy of something. The term is used across disciplines to describe repeating or copying at different scales, from molecules to data to cultural artifacts.

In biology, gene duplication is when a segment of DNA containing a gene is copied. Duplications can arise through unequal crossing over during meiosis, replication errors, or retrotransposition. Duplicated genes may mutate and acquire new functions (neofunctionalization), partition the original function (subfunctionalization), or become nonfunctional remnants called pseudogenes. Large-scale duplications such as whole-genome events are common in plants and have expanded gene families.

Chromosomal duplications are copy number variations in which a segment of a chromosome is present in more than the usual two copies. They can affect phenotype and are studied in medical genetics as potential contributors to developmental disorders and cancers. Effects depend on size, gene content, and regulation.

In linguistics, reduplication is a form of duplicating all or part of a word to convey grammatical or semantic meaning, such as intensity, plurality, or aspect.

In information technology, data duplication means storing identical copies of data in multiple locations. While this can improve reliability, it wastes storage and complicates management. Deduplication removes redundancy by identifying and eliminating duplicate data chunks, often using hashing or content-defined chunking.

In media and publishing, duplication refers to reproductions of material for distribution or archiving, with copyright and licensing considerations.