Patterns of protein sequence evolution differ among organisms across the tree of life

What is it about?

This paper shows that the patterns of protein sequence evolution exhibit major differences both depending on where sites are in the protein structure and among groups organisms. Patterns of sequence evolution within specific groups of organisms are more similar to each other than are the patterns of sequence evolution for orthologs (orthologs correspond to the "same" protein in different organisms). The within-organism patterns of patterns of sequence evolution are sufficiently similar to each other that fit the models based on those patterns can be used to classify alignments into groups based on their taxonomic source.

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Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This work provides models that can be used to improve phylogenetic analyses. The models can be used as classifiers, typically able to identify the source of aligned proteins with >70% recall.