Random field model reveals structure of the protein recombinational landscape.

ABSTRACT: We are interested in how intragenic recombination contributes to the evolution of proteins and how this mechanism complements and enhances the diversity generated by random mutation. Experiments have revealed that proteins are highly tolerant to recombination with homologous sequences (mutation by recombination is conservative); more surprisingly, they have also shown that homologous sequence fragments make largely additive contributions to biophysical properties such as stability. Here, we develop a random field model to describe the statistical features of the subset of protein space accessible by recombination, which we refer to as the recombinational landscape. This model shows quantitative agreement with experimental results compiled from eight libraries of proteins that were generate

SUBMITTER: Romero PA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3464211 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature