Single-celled organisms incorporated these trace metals into metal-binding proteins that ultimately enabled the diversification of multicellular life, the researchers speculate online this month in Geology.
Alternative splicing produces similar, yet different messages from one gene locus, thus enabling the diversification of protein sequences and function [ 4].
The differences in the active site of type-3 copper proteins are likely to have enabled the diversification of these proteins into a wide array of biological processes, including oxygen transport in molluscs and arthropods, innate immunity, wound healing and melanin pigment synthesis in a variety of metazoans, and the browning of fruits and vegetables [ 5, 10, 17- 19].
The discovery of DNA secondary structures, including quadruplexes in G-rich DNA (G4s) and iMs in C-rich DNA (iMs), has enabled the diversification of nucleic acid uses from their original roles in conventional biological processes to building blocks for nanoscale composite materials.
A better understanding of myostatin gene structure and phylogenies among other salmonids would therefore help explain fundamental mechanisms that influence duplicate gene fate and ultimately control their fixation and maintenance, which in turn enables the functional diversification of genes and genomes [ 17].
These are the subject of current ongoing research that combines molecular data, to enable the reconstruction of spatio-temporal evolutionary diversification of S. carniolicus, with experimental approaches, to explore the mechanisms maintaining cytotype mixtures.
As an emerging body of evidence also supports that HTs also enable rapid diversification of both coding and regulatory genetic sequences in eukaryotes [ 37, 38], HTs appear to represent a universal mechanism for mutational adaptation across diverse life forms.
Alternatively spliced isoforms, like gene duplications, enable a diversification of gene function, by allowing essential (often ancestral) functions to be maintained while others are able to diverge and take on new roles [ 37, 38].
Combined with other studies indicating that HTs also enable rapid diversification of both coding and regulatory genetic sequences in eukaryotes, our data suggest that hypermutable HTs represent a general and rapid evolutionary mechanism facilitating adaptation and gene regulation across diverse organisms.
Medusa also enables the characterization of diversification changes on incomplete phylogenies by letting the user assign species diversity at each tips of the tree.
