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Evolution has no reverse Whether evolution can go back to an ancestral structure just by reversing the selection pressure on function has been a long-standing issue, but one hard to address based on just the history of forms. Bridgham et al . have now physically reconstituted ancient versions of a r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNature (London) Vol. 461; no. 7263; p. 446
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Nature Publishing Group UK 24.09.2009
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects
authors
Evolution
Humanities and Social Sciences
Medical research
multidisciplinary
Mutation
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Writers
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI10.1038/7263446b

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Summary:Evolution has no reverse Whether evolution can go back to an ancestral structure just by reversing the selection pressure on function has been a long-standing issue, but one hard to address based on just the history of forms. Bridgham et al . have now physically reconstituted ancient versions of a regulatory protein (the glucocorticoid receptor) and dissected the structural constraints imposed on the evolution of their function (which hormone they bind) at atomic resolution. They find that amino acids that were essential in an ancestral protein become neutral in a more recent form, where they are then subject to erosion by genetic drift. This loss deprives natural selection of the necessary raw material with which to reverse the historical substitutions — they are no longer 'adaptive' as they were in the other direction. Evolutionarily speaking, there is no turning back.
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ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/7263446b