Inferring the determinants of protein evolutionary rates in mammals.

Yang Zou, Xiaojian Shao, Dong Dong

Gene 2016 Jun 15

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Understanding the determinants of protein evolutionary rates is one of the most fundamental evolutionary questions. Previous studies have revealed that many biological variables are tightly associated with protein evolutionary rates in mammals. However, the dominant role of these biological variables and their combinatorial effects to evolutionary rates of mammalian proteins are still less understood. In this work, we derived a quantitative model to correlate protein evolutionary rates with the levels of these variables. The result showed that only a small number of variables are necessary to accurately predict protein evolutionary rates, among which miRNA regulation plays the most important role. Our result suggested that biological variables are extensively interrelated and suffer from hidden redundancies in determining protein evolutionary rates. Various variables should be considered in a natural ensemble to comprehensively assess the determinants of protein evolutionary rate. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.