Why does a protein's evolutionary rate vary over time?

ABSTRACT: The sequences of different proteins evolve at different rates. The relative evolutionary rate (ER) of a single protein also changes over evolutionary time. The cause of this ER fluctuation remains uncertain, and study of this phenomenon may shed light on protein evolution more broadly. We have characterized ER fluctuation in mammals and Drosophila. We found little correlation between the amount of rate variation observed for a protein and such factors as its expression level or phylogenetic distribution. Perhaps more surprisingly, we found little correlation between our measure of rate variation and ER itself. We also investigated the extent to which the ERs of different domains of a protein vary independently. We found that rates of different domains do tend to vary together. In fact, rat

SUBMITTER: Du X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3622301 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature