Essentiality Is a Strong Determinant of Protein Rates of Evolution during Mutation Accumulation Experiments in Escherichia coli.

ABSTRACT: The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution is considered the most powerful theory to understand the evolutionary behavior of proteins. One of the main predictions of this theory is that essential proteins should evolve slower than dispensable ones owing to increased selective constraints. Comparison of genomes of different species, however, has revealed only small differences between the rates of evolution of essential and nonessential proteins. In some analyses, these differences vanish once confounding factors are controlled for, whereas in other cases essentiality seems to have an independent, albeit small, effect. It has been argued that comparing relatively distant genomes may entail a number of limitations. For instance, many of the genes that are dispensable in controlled lab conditi

SUBMITTER: Alvarez-Ponce D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5630975 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature