DNA Sequences Shaped by Selection for Stability 英文参考文献.docVIP

DNASequencesShapedbySelection forStability Martin Ackermann1,2*,Lin Chao1 1DivisionofBiologicalSciences,UniversityofCaliforniaSanDiego,LaJolla,California,UnitedStatesofAmerica,2ETHZu¨rich,TheoreticalBiology,Zurich,Switzerland The sequence of a stretch of nucleotides affects its propensity for errors during replication and expression. Are proteinsencodedbystableorunstablenucleotidesequences?Ifselectionforvariabilityisprevalent,onecouldexpect an excess of unstable sequences. Alternatively, if selection against targets for errors were substantial, an excess of stable sequences would be expected. We screened the genome sequences of different organisms for an important determinantofstability,thepresenceofmononucleotiderepeats.Wefindthatcodonsareusedtoencodeproteinsina waythatavoidstheemergenceofmononucleotiderepeats,andwecanattributethisbiastoselectionratherthana neutral process. This indicates that selection for stability, rather than for the generation of variation, substantially influenceshowinformationisencodedinthegenome. Citation:AckermannM,ChaoL(2006)DNAsequencesshapedbyselectionforstability.PLoSGenet2(2):e22. genousrunsofonenucleotide.Mononucleotiderepeatshave a strong in?uence on the local mutation rate [6]. In yeast, Introduction How faithfully a given stretch of nucleotides is replicated andexpressed depends not onlyon themachinery for DNA andRNAprocessinginthecell,butalsoonthesequenceof thenucleotidestretchitself.Certainsequencesareinherently prone to errors during replication and expression, whereas othersequencesaremorestable.Thestabilityofanucleotide sequence can evolve independently of the sequence of the encodedprotein.Thisisaconsequenceoftheredundancyof thegeneticcode.As61codonscodefor20aminoacids,any given amino acid sequence can be encoded by different nucleotidesequencesthatdifferintheirpropensityforerrors during replication and expression. Here we ask if the nucleotide sequences actually used by organisms are a random sample of all the possible