The Role of Evolutionary Selection in the Dynamics of Protein Structure Evolution

Overview

Journal Biophys J

Publisher Cell Press

Specialty Biophysics

Date 2017 Apr 14

PMID 28402878

Citations 21

Authors

Amy I Gilson

Ahmee Marshall-Christensen

Jeong-Mo Choi

Eugene I Shakhnovich

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Homology modeling is a powerful tool for predicting a protein's structure. This approach is successful because proteins whose sequences are only 30% identical still adopt the same structure, while structure similarity rapidly deteriorates beyond the 30% threshold. By studying the divergence of protein structure as sequence evolves in real proteins and in evolutionary simulations, we show that this nonlinear sequence-structure relationship emerges as a result of selection for protein folding stability in divergent evolution. Fitness constraints prevent the emergence of unstable protein evolutionary intermediates, thereby enforcing evolutionary paths that preserve protein structure despite broad sequence divergence. However, on longer timescales, evolution is punctuated by rare events where the fitness barriers obstructing structure evolution are overcome and discovery of new structures occurs. We outline biophysical and evolutionary rationale for broad variation in protein family sizes, prevalence of compact structures among ancient proteins, and more rapid structure evolution of proteins with lower packing density.

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