Non-synonymous to synonymous substitutions suggest that orthologs tend to keep their functions, while paralogs are a source of functional novelty.

ABSTRACT: Orthologs separate after lineages split from each other and paralogs after gene duplications. Thus, orthologs are expected to remain more functionally coherent across lineages, while paralogs have been proposed as a source of new functions. Because protein functional divergence follows from non-synonymous substitutions, we performed an analysis based on the ratio of non-synonymous to synonymous substitutions (dN/dS), as proxy for functional divergence. We used five working definitions of orthology, including reciprocal best hits (RBH), among other definitions based on network analyses and clustering. The results showed that orthologs, by all definitions tested, had values of dN/dS noticeably lower than those of paralogs, suggesting that orthologs generally tend to be more functionally stab

SUBMITTER: Escorcia-Rodriguez JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9440661 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature