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Duplicability of self-interacting human genes
Asa Pérez-Bercoff1, Takashi Makino, Aoife McLysaght
1Smurfit Institute of Genetics, University of Dublin, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.
BMC Evolutionary Biology
|June 1, 2010
Summary
Genes encoding self-interacting proteins show higher duplicability, often arising from whole-genome duplication events. This suggests gene duplication plays a key role in the evolution of protein interactions and functions.
Area of Science:
- Evolutionary biology
- Genomics
- Proteomics
Background:
- Protein-protein interactions are crucial for cellular functions and their evolution informs the development of new protein functions.
- A leading model suggests new interactions and complexes evolve via duplication of self-interacting genes, supported by yeast data.
- The human genome's gene duplication and self-interaction patterns were investigated.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine the relationship between gene duplication and protein self-interaction in the human genome.
- To determine if self-interacting genes exhibit higher duplicability compared to non-self-interacting genes.
- To compare duplication mechanisms (whole-genome vs. small-scale) for self-interacting proteins.
Main Methods:
- Analyzed 34,808 interactions from 8,881 human genes.
- Assessed gene duplicability based on self-interaction status.
- Compared self-interaction prevalence in genes duplicated via whole-genome duplication (WGD) versus small-scale duplication (SSD).
- Controlled for gene age to interpret interaction patterns.
Main Results:
- Self-interacting proteins are encoded by genes with significantly higher duplicability.
- This finding remained robust across different methods for defining duplicate genes.
- Genes duplicated via WGD showed a general tendency for more interactions compared to SSD genes.
- The increased interactions in WGD genes were linked to their greater age.
Conclusions:
- Genes encoding self-interacting proteins possess higher duplicability.
- Duplicate genes for self-interacting proteins more frequently originate from WGD than SSD.
- Self-interacting WGD genes have more interaction partners, attributable to their older age.
- Contextual factors significantly influence gene duplicability.
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