Protein stability imposes limits on organism complexity and speed of molecular evolution.

ABSTRACT: Classical population genetics a priori assigns fitness to alleles without considering molecular or functional properties of proteins that these alleles encode. Here we study population dynamics in a model where fitness can be inferred from physical properties of proteins under a physiological assumption that loss of stability of any protein encoded by an essential gene confers a lethal phenotype. Accumulation of mutations in organisms containing Gamma genes can then be represented as diffusion within the Gamma-dimensional hypercube with adsorbing boundaries determined, in each dimension, by loss of a protein's stability and, at higher stability, by lack of protein sequences. Solving the diffusion equation whose parameters are derived from the data on point mutations in proteins, we determi

SUBMITTER: Zeldovich KB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2042177 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature