These homologues show sequence and structure divergence resembling those of natural homologues in many respects, suggesting that the system may be sufficiently life-like for informative comparison to biology.
Although South America, Africa, and India, where freshwater pufferfishes occur, were components of Gondwana, the phylogenetic structure, divergence times, and reconstructed ancestral habitats obtained in the present analysis indicate that the common ancestor of freshwater pufferfishes invaded freshwater independently in these continents.
The comparison of splice sites of the families of B3 proteins in A. thaliana and P. patens genomes revealed gene structure divergence of the B3 domain during plant evolution (Figure 6, Figure 4 and Figure S2).
Evolutionary mechanisms for gene-structure divergence are also investigated.
Despite population structure, divergence among individuals within a population is greater than divergence between populations.
Contributions of community members to community structure divergence were statistically accessed at the phylum, genus and species-like levels.
In our study we have also found evidence that peptide structure divergence has led to sub- or neofunctionalisation.
Gene structure divergence plays an important role in the evolution of gene families and provides additional evidence to evaluate phylogenetic relationships.
With ITS2 considerable sequence and secondary structure divergence existed among the eight species, but a combined sequence and secondary structure phylogenetic analysis confined to helix II of ITS2 corroborated relationships as inferred from the rbcL gene phylogeny.
Exon/intron structure can provide additional evidence to support phylogenetic groupings [ 22] as exon/intron structure divergence often plays a key role in the evolution of gene families [ 23].
Intron-exon structure divergence between two genes was quantified as the number of discordant introns (introns in one gene without counterpart intron in the same position and same phase in other genes).
