Li XiaoLei, Wu ZhiQiang, Han WeiDong
Department of Molecular Biology, Institute of Basic Medicine, School of Life Sciences, General Hospital of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, Beijing, 100853 China.
Chin Sci Bull. 2013;58(9):953-960. doi: 10.1007/s11434-013-5674-9. Epub 2013 Mar 14.
The reasons why certain domains evolve much slower than others is unclear. The notion that functionally more important genes evolve more slowly than less important genes is one of the few commonly believed principles of molecular evolution. The macro-domain (also known as the X domain) is an ancient, slowly evolving and highly conserved structural domain found in proteins throughout all of the kingdoms and was first discovered nearly two decades ago with the isolation and cloning of . Macrodomains, which are functionally promiscuous, have been studied intensively for the past decade due to their importance in the regulation of cellular responses to DNA damage, chromatin remodeling, transcription and tumorigenesis. Recent structural, phylogenetic and biological analyses, however, suggest the need for some reconsideration of the evolutionary advantage of concentrating such a plethora of diverse functions into the macrodomain and of how macrodomains could perform so many functions. In this article, we focus on macrodomains that are evolving slowly and broadly discuss the potential relationship between the biological evolution and functional diversity of macrodomains.
某些结构域的进化速度比其他结构域慢得多，其原因尚不清楚。功能上更重要的基因比不太重要的基因进化得更慢，这一观点是分子进化领域少数几个被广泛认可的原则之一。大结构域（也称为X结构域）是一种古老、进化缓慢且高度保守的结构域，存在于所有生物界的蛋白质中，近二十年前随着[具体基因名称]的分离和克隆首次被发现。大结构域功能多样，在过去十年中，由于其在调节细胞对DNA损伤的反应、染色质重塑、转录和肿瘤发生中的重要性，受到了深入研究。然而，最近的结构、系统发育和生物学分析表明，需要重新考虑将如此众多不同功能集中在大结构域中的进化优势，以及大结构域如何能够执行如此多的功能。在本文中，我们聚焦于进化缓慢的大结构域，并广泛讨论大结构域的生物进化与功能多样性之间的潜在关系。
