Systemic determinants of gene evolution and function

Molecular Systems Biology ^ | 9/13/05 | Eugene V Koonin

[Ichneumon]

[E]very yeast cell churns out about 1.26 million individual PMA1 molecules, making it the second-most abundant cellular protein.

Which, of course, leaves me wondering what the *first*-most abundant cellular protein might be, and ready to smack the writer of the article for keeping us hanging like that.

[donh]

leaves me wondering what the *first*-most abundant cellular protein might be

A piece of the larger Ribosome?

[Ichneumon]

[leaves me wondering what the *first*-most abundant cellular protein might be]

A piece of the larger Ribosome?

I haven't found an answer for animals yet, but apparently the most abundant protein in plants is Rubisco (also often named as "the most abundant protein on Earth"), and for prokaryotes it's elongation factor Tu (EF-Tu).

[Ichneumon]

Here's a link to the actual research paper, no subscription required: Why highly expressed proteins evolve slowly

[PatrickHenry]

Thanks for the link, but I know my limitations. I'm going to leave all rebuttals requiring links to such material -- or professional-level comprehension thereof -- to you and a few others. I'll stick to my area of expertise -- BS detection.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I noticed that the article didn't discuss the role of regulatory genes in preventing changes to PMA1. Seems like they might've made a mention of it.

I'm reading James Valentine's book, "On the Origin of Phyla". He spends a lot of time talking about regulatory genes controlling gene change as the molecular basis for evolution.

Again I remind everyone that I'm a physicist, not a biologist.

[donh]

Rubisco (also often named as "the most abundant protein on Earth"),

Because no creature can resist those rubisco crackers with the cream filling.

[jennyp]

Here's a link to the actual research paper, no subscription required: Why highly expressed proteins evolve slowly

Thanks for the link!

[phantomworker]

A recent study by Fraser (2005)seems to clarify the issue and provides an intriguing insight into the evolutionary forces that may be at play in network evolution. Fraser partitioned the interaction network hubs into two classes and showed that they dramatically differ in terms of the connection with the evolutionary rate (or, more precisely, the strength of purifying selection measured as the ratio of the rates for synonymous and nonsynonymous positions in coding sequences). It turns out that hubs that interact with numerous partners within a network module (intramodule hubs, also known under the more appealing name of 'party hubs';...

Taken together, these recent studies make, perhaps, relatively small but concrete inroads into the domain of Evolutionary Systems Biology (Medina, 2005). This area of inquiry is just making its baby steps, and the road ahead will be long and hard. ...

It seems intuitively almost obvious that genes with many connections (network hubs) are 'important' and should be essential more often than poorly connected genes; ...

... The current state of Evolutionary Systems Biology is typical of any burgeoning discipline: it is clear that there are important signals out there but our ability to discern and understand these signals is hampered both by inaccuracies and biases in the data and the inadequacy of the existing theoretical models. These difficulties notwithstanding, we should be motivated by the (I believe, reasonable) hope that, as this field matures, our one-dimensional understanding of genome evolution develops into a multidimensional picture of evolution of organisms as systems.

Wow, I thought I was going to have a hard time getting to sleep tonite! This article is actually so facinating how it relates to systems engineering and network centric operations... I'll sleep well now...