Pathway length and evolutionary constraint in amino acid biosynthesis

The evolutionary properties of a metabolic network may be determined by the topology of the network. One attribute of pathways that make up the network is the number of enzymatic steps between initial substrates and final products. To determine the effect of pathway length on evolutionary lability o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of molecular evolution 2004-02, Vol.58 (2), p.218-224
Main Authors: Rutter, Matthew T, Zufall, Rebecca A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amino acids
Amino Acids - biosynthesis
Arabidopsis - genetics
Archaea - genetics
Bacteria - genetics
Biosynthesis
Databases, Genetic
Enzymes
Enzymes - genetics
Evolution, Molecular
Evolutionary biology
Likelihood Functions
Metabolism
Models, Genetic
Phylogeny
Protein Interaction Mapping
RNA, Ribosomal, 16S - genetics
Saccharomyces cerevisiae - genetics
Substrates
Topology
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Summary:The evolutionary properties of a metabolic network may be determined by the topology of the network. One attribute of pathways that make up the network is the number of enzymatic steps between initial substrates and final products. To determine the effect of pathway length on evolutionary lability of pathway structure, we examined amino acid biosynthetic pathways across 48 sequenced organisms. We demonstrate that longer pathways exhibit lower rates of change in pathway structure than shorter pathways. This finding suggests that increasing complexity may increase constraint on evolutionary change.
ISSN:0022-2844
1432-1432
DOI:10.1007/s00239-003-2546-y