Ancestral reconstruction of duplicated signaling proteins reveals the evolution of signaling specificity.

ABSTRACT: Gene duplication is crucial to generating novel signaling pathways during evolution. However, it remains unclear how the redundant proteins produced by gene duplication ultimately acquire new interaction specificities to establish insulated paralogous signaling pathways. Here, we used ancestral sequence reconstruction to resurrect and characterize a bacterial two-component signaling system that duplicated in α-proteobacteria. We determined the interaction specificities of the signaling proteins that existed before and immediately after this duplication event and then identified key mutations responsible for establishing specificity in the two systems. Just three mutations, in only two of the four interacting proteins, were sufficient to establish specificity of the extant systems. Some of

SUBMITTER: Nocedal I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9208753 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature