Authors:

Michael David Gardner

Date Created:

Not specified

Course Title:

Professor:

Not specified

About Paper:

A central question in evolutionary biology is what are the relative roles of chance, contingency, and necessity (CCN) on the outcomes of evolution? Since we are unable to directly observe the pertinent evolutionary changes, we don't know to what degree each component came into play. However, by comparing how traits have evolved multiple times, we can gain insight into the roles of CCN in evolution. If we see the same mechanisms, necessity likely has a strong influence since it had to evolve that way to function. If the mechanisms are different, chance and/or contingency likely have strong influence. Throughout history, tyrosine phosphorylation has arisen a few times, meaning that we can observe the effects of CCN. Here we determined the genetic and molecular basis for tyrosine kinase (TK) activity in the Wee family of kinases. To determine when and how this family of kinases gained this function, we reconstructed a phylogeny of related kinases and determined their phosphorylation capabilities. This revealed the TK activity in the Wee family is ancient, dating to before the divergence of amoebas from obazoa. We are also constructing an accurate evolutionary history of kinases using maximum likelihood phylogenetics based on structural alignments of common kinase molecular features to better determine when this event occurred. We will then reconstruct the last common ancestor of Wee and related kinases and will compare the sequences and mechanisms against those underlying the evolution of TK activity in other kinases families to understand more about CCN in evolution. Keywords: Kinase; Evolution; Phylogeny; Phosphorylation; Chance, Contingency, and Necessity

Source:

Purdue University / 2024

Topics:

No topics listed

Co-authors:

Michael David Gardner