Multidimensional Phylogenetic Metrics Identify Class I Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetase Evolutionary Mosaicity and Inter-Modular Coupling.

ABSTRACT: The role of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRS) in the emergence and evolution of genetic coding poses challenging questions concerning their provenance. We seek evidence about their ancestry from curated structure-based multiple sequence alignments of a structurally invariant "scaffold" shared by all 10 canonical Class I aaRS. Three uncorrelated phylogenetic metrics-mutation frequency, its uniformity, and row-by-row cladistic congruence-imply that the Class I scaffold is a mosaic assembled from successive genetic sources. Metrics for different modules vary in accordance with their presumed functionality. Sequences derived from the ATP- and amino acid- binding sites exhibit specific two-way coupling to those derived from Connecting Peptide 1, a third module whose metrics suggest later acquis

SUBMITTER: Carter CW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8835825 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature