ortologa

Ortóloga is a term encountered in some Spanish-language scientific contexts to denote a scholar or practitioner specializing in ortología, the study of orthology. It is not a universally standardized term, and its precise meaning can vary by language and field. In many cases, the term functions as the feminine form of a professional title related to orthology.

In biology, orthology refers to genes in different species that originated by speciation from a single ancestral gene, as opposed to paralogs created by gene duplication. An ortóloga, in this sense, is a researcher who identifies and analyzes orthologous genes across genomes, constructs gene trees, and uses orthology relationships to infer gene function and evolutionary history.

Practical applications include transferring functional annotations between species, guiding comparative genomics studies, and informing experimental design in model organisms and human genetics. Researchers working with orthology face challenges such as distinguishing orthologs from paralogs in complex gene families and accounting for events like gene duplication, loss, and lineage-specific evolution.

While orthology is the standard term in English-language literature, ortología or ortóloga may appear in Spanish- and Portuguese-language texts to reflect gendered forms of the profession. The underlying concept remains the same: orthology concerns the evolutionary relationships of genes across species and their use in comparative and functional genomics. See also ortholog, paralog, and comparative genomics.