Biological function in the twilight zone of sequence conservation

Strong DNA conservation among divergent species is an indicator of enduring functionality. With weaker sequence conservation we enter a vast 'twilight zone' in which sequence subject to transient or lower constraint cannot be distinguished easily from neutrally evolving, non-functional seq...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBMC biology Vol. 15; no. 1; pp. 71 - 9
Main Author Ponting, Chris P.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England BioMed Central Ltd 16.08.2017
BioMed Central
BMC
Subjects
Amino Acid Sequence
Conservation
Conserved Sequence
Data acquisition
Data processing
Deoxyribonucleic acid
Divergence
DNA
DNA sequencing
Evolution
Evolution, Molecular
Gene expression
Genomes
Genomics
Mutation
Nucleotide sequence
Population
Positive selection
Proteins
Reading
Review
Sequence Analysis, Protein
Trends
Twilight zone (Oceanography)
Wildlife conservation
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Summary:Strong DNA conservation among divergent species is an indicator of enduring functionality. With weaker sequence conservation we enter a vast 'twilight zone' in which sequence subject to transient or lower constraint cannot be distinguished easily from neutrally evolving, non-functional sequence. Twilight zone functional sequence is illuminated instead by principles of selective constraint and positive selection using genomic data acquired from within a species' population. Application of these principles reveals that despite being biochemically active, most twilight zone sequence is not functional.
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ISSN:1741-7007
1741-7007
DOI:10.1186/s12915-017-0411-5