The evolution of protein function appears to involve alternating periods of conservative evolution and of relatively rapid change. Evidence for such episodic evolution, consistent with some theoretical expectations, comes from the application of increasingly sophisticated models of evolution to large sequence datasets. We present here some of the recent methods to detect functional shifts, using amino acid or codon models. Both provide evidence for punctual shifts in patterns of amino acid conservation, including the fixation of key changes by positive selection. Although a link to gene duplication, a presumed source of functional changes, has been difficult to establish, this episodic model appears to apply to a wide variety of proteins and organisms.
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August 2009
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Conference Article|
July 22 2009
Evidence for an episodic model of protein sequence evolution
Romain A. Studer;
Romain A. Studer
1Department of Ecology and Evolution, Biophore, Lausanne University, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland, and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi
Marc Robinson-Rechavi
1
1Department of Ecology and Evolution, Biophore, Lausanne University, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland, and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
1To whom correspondence should be addressed (email marc.robinson-rechavi@unil.ch).
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Publisher: Portland Press Ltd
Received:
January 21 2009
Online ISSN: 1470-8752
Print ISSN: 0300-5127
© The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 Biochemical Society
2009
Biochem Soc Trans (2009) 37 (4): 783–786.
Article history
Received:
January 21 2009
Citation
Romain A. Studer, Marc Robinson-Rechavi; Evidence for an episodic model of protein sequence evolution. Biochem Soc Trans 1 August 2009; 37 (4): 783–786. doi: https://doi.org/10.1042/BST0370783
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