查看文章

The role of sequence divergence in functional divergence of duplicate genes is a topic of great interest. In this study, we compare the numbers of amino acid substitutions in each sequence since two yeast duplicates diverged, using a preduplication ancestral outgroup. Using this strategy, we explored the relationship between sequence divergence and functional divergence between duplicate partners. We show that the degree of relative functional asymmetry between duplicate proteins is proportional to the relative sequence divergence between them. Furthermore, of the two duplicates, the copy closer to their ancestral sequence (fewer number of amino acid substitutions) interacts with more proteins and affects fitness more severely when deleted. Therefore, asymmetric sequence divergence between duplicates is correlated with asymmetric functional divergence and may underlie the duplicate's role in …