Gene Birth Contributes to Structural Disorder Encoded by Overlapping Genes.

ABSTRACT: The same nucleotide sequence can encode two protein products in different reading frames. Overlapping gene regions encode higher levels of intrinsic structural disorder (ISD) than nonoverlapping genes (39% vs. 25% in our viral dataset). This might be because of the intrinsic properties of the genetic code, because one member per pair was recently born de novo in a process that favors high ISD, or because high ISD relieves increased evolutionary constraint imposed by dual-coding. Here, we quantify the relative contributions of these three alternative hypotheses. We estimate that the recency of de novo gene birth explains [Formula: see text] or more of the elevation in ISD in overlapping regions of viral genes. While the two reading frames within a same-strand overlappin

SUBMITTER: Willis S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6116962 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature