Evolutionary fates within a microbial population highlight an essential role for protein folding during natural selection.

ABSTRACT: Systems biology can offer a great deal of insight into evolution by quantitatively linking complex properties such as protein structure, folding, and function to the fitness of an organism. Although the link between diseases such as Alzheimer's and misfolding is well appreciated, directly showing the importance of protein folding to success in evolution has been more difficult. We show here that predicting success during adaptation can depend critically on enzyme kinetic and folding models. We used a 'weak link' method to favor mutations to an essential, but maladapted, adenylate kinase gene within a microbial population that resulted in the identification of five mutants that arose nearly simultaneously and competed for success. Physicochemical characterization of these mutants showed tha

SUBMITTER: Pena MI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2925523 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature