Wilson Benjamin A, Foy Scott G, Neme Rafik, Masel Joanna
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona.
Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology.
Nat Ecol Evol. 2017 Jun;1(6):0146-146. doi: 10.1038/s41559-017-0146. Epub 2017 Apr 24.
The phenomenon of gene birth from junk DNA is surprising, because random polypeptides are expected to be toxic. There are two conflicting views about how gene birth is nevertheless possible: the continuum hypothesis invokes a gradual gene birth process, while the preadaptation hypothesis predicts that young genes will show extreme levels of gene-like traits. We show that intrinsic structural disorder conforms to the predictions of the preadaptation hypothesis and falsifies the continuum hypothesis, with all genes having higher levels than translated junk DNA, but young genes having the highest level of all. Results are robust to homology detection bias, to the non-independence of multiple members of the same gene family, and to the false positive annotation of protein-coding genes.
由垃圾DNA产生基因的现象令人惊讶，因为随机多肽预计是有毒的。关于基因诞生如何仍然可能存在两种相互矛盾的观点：连续统假说提出了一个渐进的基因诞生过程，而预适应假说预测年轻基因将表现出极高水平的类基因特征。我们表明，内在结构紊乱符合预适应假说的预测，并证伪了连续统假说，所有基因的水平都高于翻译后的垃圾DNA，但年轻基因的水平在所有基因中最高。结果对于同源性检测偏差、同一基因家族多个成员的非独立性以及蛋白质编码基因的假阳性注释具有稳健性。
