Different subunits belonging to the same protein complex often exhibit discordant expression levels and evolutionary properties
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Updated: Apr 27, 2026

Optimization of Synthetic Proteins: Identification of Interpositional Dependencies Indicating Structurally and/or Functionally Linked Residues
Published on: July 14, 2015
Or Matalon1, Amnon Horovitz1, Emmanuel D Levy1
1Department of Structural Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
Abstract:
Hetero-oligomeric protein complexes are involved in many of the key processes in cells. Given that the subunits of a complex function together, it has often been expected to find that (i) they are expressed at similar levels in cells; (ii) they are simultaneously present or absent in genomes; and that (iii) the effects on fitness of deleting their genes should be similar. Such a coherence is, however, often found to be weak or absent. Multi-functionality of subunits and mechanisms of complex assembly are discussed as possible sources for the lack of coherence.
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