Preserving biological diversity requires conserved areas as well as connections ("dispersal corridors") between them permitting biotic expansion (and the cycle of taxon pulses), setting the stage for the production of new species and ecological associations.
Thus, recognition of similar ligands, supposedly linked to similar function, requires conserved recognition features exposed in terms of common physicochemical interaction properties via the functional groups of the residues flanking a particular binding cavity.
Further, 5′ 3′ translocation polarity requires conserved residues in HD1 and the FeS cluster containing domain.
Collinearity, a more specific form of synteny that requires conserved gene order, can facilitate more accurate detection of synteny.
The BMP-pathway-enhancing function of integrins is independent of focal adhesion kinase, but it requires conserved NPXY motifs in the β-integrin cytoplasmic tail.
Structure-function experiments suggest that both the localization and NMJ growth-limiting function of Mena requires conserved C-terminal actin-regulatory domains.
The unique repeat addition processivity of telomerase requires conserved domains in both TERT and hTR that distinguish telomerases from other polymerase families (Blackburn and Collins, 2011; Podlevsky and Chen, 2012).
Wise investments in the future of our planet require conserving our greatest natural assets: protected areas.
For example, HAC1 is a well-studied gene in yeast that undergoes non-spliceosomal splicing for dual-coding regions, and the mRNA for this gene is known to require conserved mRNA secondary structures in order to undergo alternative splicing [20], [21].
