Evolving proteins at Darwins bicentenary.docVIP

Meeting report Evolving proteins at Darwins bicentenary John W Pinney and Michael PH Stumpf Address: Centre for Bioinformatics, Division of Molecular Biosciences, Imperial College London, Wolfson Building, London SW7 2AZ, UK. Correspondence: Michael PH Stumpf. Email: m.stumpf@imperial.ac.uk Published: 17 April 2009 Genome Biology 2009, 10:307 (doi:10.1186/gb-2009-10-4-307) The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at /2009/10/4/307 ? 2009 BioMed Central Ltd be linked to structure more directly through comparative A report of the Biochemical Society/Wellcome Trust arguments than would have been possible using biophysical meeting Protein Evolution - Sequences, Structures and or biochemical arguments. Despite vast increases in Systems, Hinxton, UK, 26-27 January 2009. computational power and experimental resolution, this continues to be the case to the present day. The explosion in available whole-genome data has provided us with a much richer understanding of genomic aspects of protein evolution. This was highlighted by Chris Ponting (University of Oxford, UK), who contrasted the distributions of proteins and protein family members in the human and mouse genomes. Such a comparison reveals high levels of sequence duplication - probably in line with what might be expected, given recent findings of copy-number variation - and suggests a scenario where ancient single-copy genes are only rarely gained or lost. Members of larger gene families, The effects of natural selection are ultimately mediated through protein function. The traditional view that selection on proteins is primarily due to the effects of mutations on protein structure has, however, in recent years been replaced by a much richer picture. This modern perspective was in evidence at a recent meeting on protein evolution in Hinxton, UK.