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Selection Shapes the Robustness of Ligand-Binding Amino Acids

Bilgin, Tugce ; Kurnaz, Isil ; Wagner, Andreas

In: Journal of Molecular Evolution, 2013, vol. 76, no. 5, p. 343-349

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    Titre
    • Selection Shapes the Robustness of Ligand-Binding Amino Acids
    Auteur
    • Bilgin, Tugce. Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
    • Kurnaz, Isil. Department of Genetics and Bioengineering, Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey
    • Wagner, Andreas. Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
    Type de document
    • Postprint
    Langue
    • Anglais
    Publié dans
    • Journal of Molecular Evolution, 2013, vol. 76, no. 5, p. 343-349. Springer-Verlag
    Autre version électronique
    Identifiant OAI-PMH
    • oai:doc.rero.ch:321692
    Summary
    The phenotypes of biological systems are to some extent robust to genotypic changes. Such robustness exists on multiple levels of biological organization. We analyzed this robustness for two categories of amino acids in proteins. Specifically, we studied the codons of amino acids that bind or do not bind small molecular ligands. We asked to what extent codon changes caused by mutation or mistranslation may affect physicochemical amino acid properties or protein folding. We found that the codons of ligand-binding amino acids are on average more robust than those of non-binding amino acids. Because mistranslation is usually more frequent than mutation, we speculate that selection for error mitigation at the translational level stands behind this phenomenon. Our observations suggest that natural selection can affect the robustness of very small units of biological organization