Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2012
Abstract
Protein sequences are normally the most conserved elements of genomes owing to purifying selection to maintain their functions. We document an extraordinary amount of within-species protein sequence variation in the model eukaryote Dictyostelium discoideum stemming from triplet DNA repeats coding for long strings of single amino acids. D. discoideum has a very large number of such strings, many of which are polyglutamine repeats, the same sequence that causes various human neurological disorders in humans, like Huntington’s disease. We show here that D. discoideum coding repeat loci are highly variable among individuals, making D. discoideum a candidate for the most variable proteome. The coding repeat loci are not significantly less variable than similar non-coding triplet repeats. This pattern is consistent with these amino-acid repeats being largely non-functional sequences evolving primarily by mutation and drift.
Recommended Citation
Scala, Clea; Tian, Xiangjun; Mehdiabadi, Natasha J.; Smith, Margaret H.; Saxer, Gerda; Stephens, Katie; Buzombo, Prince; Strassmann, Joan E.; and Queller, David C., "Amino Acid Repeats Cause Extraordinary Coding Sequence Variation in the Social Amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum" (2012). Biology Faculty Publications & Presentations. 16.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/bio_facpubs/16
Embargo Period
10-4-2012
Comments
Copyright: © 2012 Scala et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046150