Differences in evolutionary pressure acting within highly conserved ortholog groups.

ABSTRACT:

Background

In highly conserved widely distributed ortholog groups, the main evolutionary force is assumed to be purifying selection that enforces sequence conservation, with most divergence occurring by accumulation of neutral substitutions. Using a set of ortholog groups from prokaryotes, with a single representative in each studied organism, we asked the question if this evolutionary pressure is acting similarly on different subgroups of orthologs defined as major lineages (e.g. Proteobacteria or Firmicutes).

Results

Using correlations in entropy measures as a proxy for evolutionary pressure, we observed two distinct behaviors within our ortholog collection. The first subset of ortholog groups, called here informational, consisted mostly of proteins associated with informa

SUBMITTER: Przytycka TM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2488352 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature