Just how versatile are domains?

ABSTRACT:

Background

Creating new protein domain arrangements is a frequent mechanism of evolutionary innovation. While some domains always form the same combinations, others form many different arrangements. This ability, which is often referred to as versatility or promiscuity of domains, its a random evolutionary model in which a domain's promiscuity is based on its relative frequency of domains.

Results

We show that there is a clear relationship across genomes between the promiscuity of a given domain and its frequency. However, the strength of this relationship differs for different domains. We thus redefine domain promiscuity by defining a new index, DV I ("domain versatility index"), which eliminates the effect of domain frequency. We explore links between a domain's versatilit

SUBMITTER: Weiner J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2588589 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature