Resurrection of an ancestral 5S rRNA.

ABSTRACT:

Background

In addition to providing phylogenetic relationships, tree making procedures such as parsimony and maximum likelihood can make specific predictions of actual historical sequences. Resurrection of such sequences can be used to understand early events in evolution. In the case of RNA, the nature of parsimony is such that when applied to multiple RNA sequences it typically predicts ancestral sequences that satisfy the base pairing constraints associated with secondary structure. The case for such sequences being actual ancestors is greatly improved, if they can be shown to be biologically functional.

Results

A unique common ancestral sequence of 28 Vibrio 5S ribosomal RNA sequences predicted by parsimony was resurrected and found to be functional in the context of the

SUBMITTER: Lu Q 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3161009 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature