Comparable contributions of structural-functional constraints and expression level to the rate of protein sequence evolution.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Proteins show a broad range of evolutionary rates. Understanding the factors that are responsible for the characteristic rate of evolution of a given protein arguably is one of the major goals of evolutionary biology. A long-standing general assumption used to be that the evolution rate is, primarily, determined by the specific functional constraints that affect the given protein. These constrains were traditionally thought to depend both on the specific features of the protein's structure and its biological role. The advent of systems biology brought about new types of data, such as expression level and protein-protein interactions, and unexpectedly, a variety of correlations between protein evolution rate and these variables have been observed. The strongest connection

SUBMITTER: Wolf MY 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2572155 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature