How Human Proteins Evolved
Author Information
Author(s): Nuria Lopez-Bigas, Subhajyoti De, Sarah A Teichmann
Primary Institution: Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Hypothesis
Have metazoans evolved through a process of incremental changes occurring evenly across genes from different functional categories, or is there a pattern by which some classes of gene function accumulate mutations quickly, while others remain conserved throughout evolution across different branches of the species tree?
Conclusion
The study shows that regulatory processes in human evolution are highly plastic, while core processes are largely conserved.
Supporting Evidence
- Regulatory proteins diverge quickly across species.
- Proteins involved in core processes are conserved.
- Certain functional categories exhibit dynamic patterns of sequence divergence.
Takeaway
This study looks at how human proteins have changed over time, showing that some proteins change a lot while others stay the same.
Methodology
The study used a new method called FRED to analyze the divergence of human proteins across 15 eukaryotic genomes.
Limitations
The analysis focuses purely on protein-coding genes and does not capture other dimensions of human evolution.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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