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  • Neuroscience

    • Insights into the Evolution of the Motilin/Ghrelin-Associated Family and Their Receptors

      • J. He, D. M. Irwin, Y.-p. Zhang
        Original article citation: Molecular Biology and Evolution doi:10.1093/molbev/msm161 (2007)

      • Categories: Ecology & Evolution, Genetics, Neuroscience, and Cell & Molecular Biology
      • Recommended by : yongyi shen on 09/14/2007 07:21AM GMT

        According to Darwinian theory, complexity evolves by a stepwise process of elaboration and optimization under natural selection. Simultaneous emergence of more than one element by mutational processes is unlikely, so this would evoke an evolutionary puzzle that how evolutionary processes assemble complex systems that depend on specific interactions among the parts. Based on phylogenetic analyses and molecular inferences, He et al. investigated the evolution of the motilin/ghrelin-associated family and their receptors, and demonstrated that the ghrelin/GHSR system has been maintained and functionally conserved from fish to mammals, whereas motilin-MLNR specificity only evolved as the result of ligand-receptor coevolution after the hormone gene duplicated. Discordance of evolutionary histories for the receptors and ligands indicates that tightly integrated systems can be assembled by combining old molecules that were previously constrained with different ancestral roles, with new ones (generated by gene duplication that represents slight structural variants of an older element). Then they proposed a model for the evolution of novelties in tightly integrated biological systems, which may provide a general explanation for how the molecular interactions critical for life’s complexity emerged in Darwinian fashion after gene duplication.
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