Why is the correlation between gene importance and gene evolutionary rate so weak?

ABSTRACT: One of the few commonly believed principles of molecular evolution is that functionally more important genes (or DNA sequences) evolve more slowly than less important ones. This principle is widely used by molecular biologists in daily practice. However, recent genomic analysis of a diverse array of organisms found only weak, negative correlations between the evolutionary rate of a gene and its functional importance, typically measured under a single benign lab condition. A frequently suggested cause of the above finding is that gene importance determined in the lab differs from that in an organism's natural environment. Here, we test this hypothesis in yeast using gene importance values experimentally determined in 418 lab conditions or computationally predicted for 10,000 nutritional con

SUBMITTER: Wang Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2605560 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature