Month: September 2022

STRESS INDUCES INNOVATION. "Putative de novo genes were found to show a higher gene expression response to abiotic and biotic stressors in Arabidopsis thaliana than young genes with a different evolutionary origin. Similarly, putative de novo genes in Daphnia magna are twice as likely to be differentially expressed under biotic and abiotic stress than old genes." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168952515000347 View in LinkedIn

THE CRITICAL IMPOSTER. "One important question concerns how a newly evolved gene can become essential. It is an apparent paradox because clearly the organism previously survived in the absence of that gene." https://lnkd.in/dPqZs3m View in LinkedIn

RAPID INNOVATION UNDER STRESS. "This striking similarity across different species strongly suggests that de novo genes are particularly important for population-specific responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. Functions that require rapid change, aligned with their short persistence times." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168952515000347 View in LinkedIn

CONFORMATIONAL ACTIVITY. "Tightly linked to the concept of de novo gene formation is the protein-folding problem. What is the possibility of arriving at a biologically active polypeptide through random exploration of sequence space. The evolution of novel proteins capable of molecular recognition and catalytic activity has been explored by selection for activity or small molecule binders in several experiments." https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn

FINITE TEMPLATES. "There appears to be limited number of folded polypeptides that nature uses to create the available repertoire of proteins." Proteins = to the number of galaxies in the observable universe, 10(11). https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn

ANCIENT FORMATS. "The presence of proteins with identical folds but no discernible sequence identity has been noted by structural biologists throughout the years. Whether these cases are examples of extreme divergence from a common ancestor or convergent evolution is difficult to address from genome sequences alone." https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn

RARE EVENTS. "Keefe and Szostak derived ATP-binding proteins from 80 amino acid random sequences using high-diversity mRNA display (6 × 10(12) variants)...In their selection, an estimated frequency of 1 in 10(11) random sequence proteins was able to bind ATP. Interestingly, the selected proteins showed no significant homology with biological ATP-binding motifs suggesting that there are novel folds not sampled by nature for this specific purpose." https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn

GENE TURNOVER. "The birth and death of genes is central to adaptive evolution, yet the underlying genome dynamics remain elusive." https://lnkd.in/d-Wf9Jd View in LinkedIn

DRIVERS OF TURNOVER. "One of the unique insights provided by the growing number of fully sequenced genomes is the pervasiveness of gene duplication and gene loss." https://lnkd.in/dMJvzp7 View in LinkedIn

DYNAMIC PROCESS. "While gene family evolution is pervasive, it may be especially important in our own evolution since it appears that the "revolving door" of gene duplication and loss has undergone multiple accelerations in the lineage leading to humans." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19153999 View in LinkedIn