The evolution of extracellular fibrillins and their functional domains.

ABSTRACT: Fibrillins constitute the major backbone of multifunctional microfibrils in elastic and non-elastic extracellular matrices, and are known to interact with several binding partners including tropoelastin and integrins. Here, we study the evolution of fibrillin proteins. Following sequence collection from 39 organisms representative of the major evolutionary groups, molecular evolutionary genetics and phylogeny inference software were used to generate a series of evolutionary trees using distance-based and maximum likelihood methods. The resulting trees support the concept of gene duplication as a means of generating the three vertebrate fibrillins. Beginning with a single fibrillin sequence found in invertebrates and jawless fish, a gene duplication event, which coincides with the appearanc

SUBMITTER: Piha-Gossack A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3306419 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature