Impact of translational error-induced and error-free misfolding on the rate of protein evolution.

ABSTRACT: What determines the rate of protein evolution is a fundamental question in biology. Recent genomic studies revealed a surprisingly strong anticorrelation between the expression level of a protein and its rate of sequence evolution. This observation is currently explained by the translational robustness hypothesis in which the toxicity of translational error-induced protein misfolding selects for higher translational robustness of more abundant proteins, which constrains sequence evolution. However, the impact of error-free protein misfolding has not been evaluated. We estimate that a non-negligible fraction of misfolded proteins are error free and demonstrate by a molecular-level evolutionary simulation that selection against protein misfolding results in a greater reduction of error-free

SUBMITTER: Yang JR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2990641 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature