Investigating 42 candidate orthologous protein groups by molecular evolutionary analysis on genome scale
2000; Elsevier BV; Volume: 261; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/s0378-1119(00)00506-0
ISSN1879-0038
Autores Tópico(s)RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms
ResumoIt is one of key problems for comparative genomics to accurately identify orthologous genes/proteins. Here 42 quartettes of human, yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, and fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster candidate orthologs, defined by using similarity-based highest hit criteria (Mushegian et al., 1998 Genome Res. 8: 590–598), were reconsidered according to molecular evolutionary analysis. We found that only 14 of the 42 candidate orthologous groups can be identified to have truly one-to-one orthologous relationships, whereas other groups were characterized by one (many)-to-many orthologous relationships or even more complex scenarios involving gene duplications and/or gene losses. The result could imply that the classical one-to-one orthology might be not as common as typically accepted and automated similarity-based methods should be used with caution when accurate orthology/paralogy discrimination is required.
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