Modularity and evolutionary constraint on proteins (original) (raw)
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- Published: 06 March 2005
Nature Genetics volume 37, pages 351–352 (2005)Cite this article
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Abstract
Modularity, which has been found in the functional and physical protein interaction networks of many organisms, has been postulated to affect both the mode and tempo of evolution. Here I show that in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, protein interaction hubs situated in single modules are highly constrained, whereas those connecting different modules are more plastic. This pattern of change could reflect a tendency for evolutionary innovations to occur by altering the proteins and interactions between rather than within modules, in a manner somewhat similar to the evolution of new proteins through the shuffling of conserved protein domains.
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Figure 1: Intramodule hubs are more evolutionarily constrained than intermodule hubs.

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Acknowledgements
I thank J. Plotkin and A. Hirsh for suggestions. This work was supported by a National Science Foundation predoctoral fellowship.
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- Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA
Hunter B Fraser
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Correspondence toHunter B Fraser.
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Fraser, H. Modularity and evolutionary constraint on proteins.Nat Genet 37, 351–352 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng1530
- Received: 04 October 2004
- Accepted: 03 February 2005
- Published: 06 March 2005
- Issue date: 01 April 2005
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ng1530