Research article
Evolutionary versatility of eukaryotic protein domains revealed by their bigram networks
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* Corresponding authors: Xueying Xie xxying.rcls@seu.edu.cn - Yongyi Mao yymao@site.uottawa.ca
1 Research Center for Learning Science, Southeast University, Sipai Lou 2, Nanjing 210096 China
2 Centre for systems Biology, Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, 600 University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1X5 Canada
3 School of Information Technology and Engineering (SITE), University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5 Canada
BMC Evolutionary Biology 2011, 11:242 doi:10.1186/1471-2148-11-242
Published: 18 August 2011Abstract
Background
Protein domains are globular structures of independently folded polypeptides that exert catalytic or binding activities. Their sequences are recognized as evolutionary units that, through genome recombination, constitute protein repertoires of linkage patterns. Via mutations, domains acquire modified functions that contribute to the fitness of cells and organisms. Recent studies have addressed the evolutionary selection that may have shaped the functions of individual domains and the emergence of particular domain combinations, which led to new cellular functions in multi-cellular animals. This study focuses on modeling domain linkage globally and investigates evolutionary implications that may be revealed by novel computational analysis.
Results
A survey of 77 completely sequenced eukaryotic genomes implies a potential hierarchical and modular organization of biological functions in most living organisms. Domains in a genome or multiple genomes are modeled as a network of hetero-duplex covalent linkages, termed bigrams. A novel computational technique is introduced to decompose such networks, whereby the notion of domain "networking versatility" is derived and measured. The most and least "versatile" domains (termed "core domains" and "peripheral domains" respectively) are examined both computationally via sequence conservation measures and experimentally using selected domains. Our study suggests that such a versatility measure extracted from the bigram networks correlates with the adaptivity of domains during evolution, where the network core domains are highly adaptive, significantly contrasting the network peripheral domains.
Conclusions
Domain recombination has played a major part in the evolution of eukaryotes attributing to genome complexity. From a system point of view, as the results of selection and constant refinement, networks of domain linkage are structured in a hierarchical modular fashion. Domains with high degree of networking versatility appear to be evolutionary adaptive, potentially through functional innovations. Domain bigram networks are informative as a model of biological functions. The networking versatility indices extracted from such networks for individual domains reflect the strength of evolutionary selection that the domains have experienced.