Robustness of Reconstructed Ancestral Protein Functions to Statistical Uncertainty.

ABSTRACT: Hypotheses about the functions of ancient proteins and the effects of historical mutations on them are often tested using ancestral protein reconstruction (APR)-phylogenetic inference of ancestral sequences followed by synthesis and experimental characterization. Usually, some sequence sites are ambiguously reconstructed, with two or more statistically plausible states. The extent to which the inferred functions and mutational effects are robust to uncertainty about the ancestral sequence has not been studied systematically. To address this issue, we reconstructed ancestral proteins in three domain families that have different functions, architectures, and degrees of uncertainty; we then experimentally characterized the functional robustness of these proteins when uncertainty was incorpora

SUBMITTER: Eick GN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6095102 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature