The Role of Evolutionary Selection in the Dynamics of Protein Structure Evolution.

ABSTRACT: Homology modeling is a powerful tool for predicting a protein's structure. This approach is successful because proteins whose sequences are only 30% identical still adopt the same structure, while structure similarity rapidly deteriorates beyond the 30% threshold. By studying the divergence of protein structure as sequence evolves in real proteins and in evolutionary simulations, we show that this nonlinear sequence-structure relationship emerges as a result of selection for protein folding stability in divergent evolution. Fitness constraints prevent the emergence of unstable protein evolutionary intermediates, thereby enforcing evolutionary paths that preserve protein structure despite broad sequence divergence. However, on longer timescales, evolution is punctuated by rare events where

SUBMITTER: Gilson AI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5390048 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature