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. 2011 Jul 19;108(29):11954-8.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1017361108. Epub 2011 Jul 5.

Reductive evolution of proteomes and protein structures

Minglei Wang  1 , Charles G Kurland, Gustavo Caetano-Anollés
Affiliations

Reductive evolution of proteomes and protein structures

Minglei Wang et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

The lengths of orthologous protein families in Eukarya are almost double the lengths found in Bacteria and Archaea. Here we examine protein structures in 745 genomes and show that protein length differences between superkingdoms arise as much shorter prokaryotic nondomain linker sequences. Eukaryotic, bacterial, and archaeal linkers are 250, 86, and 73 aa residues in length, respectively, whereas folded domain sequences are 281, 280, and 256 residues, respectively. Cryptic domains match linkers (P < 0.0001) with probabilities ranging between 0.022 and 0.042; accordingly, they do not affect length estimates significantly. Linker sequences support intermolecular binding within proteomes and they are probably enriched in intrinsically disordered regions as well. Reductively evolved linker sequence lengths in growth rate maximized cells should be proportional to proteome diversity. By using total in-frame coding capacity of a genome [i.e., coding sequence (CDS)] as a reliable measure of proteome diversity, we find linker lengths of prokaryotes clearly evolve in proportion to CDS values, whereas those of eukaryotes are more randomly larger than expected. Domain lengths scarcely change over the entire range of CDS values. Thus, the protein linkers of prokaryotes evolve reductively whereas those of eukaryotes do not.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Plot shows average lengths (amino acid numbers) of domains and linkers in 745 genomes, including 215 Eukarya (blue circles), 478 Bacteria (pink circles), and 52 Archaea (brown circles). Mean values of proteins with different domain numbers within the same genome could be separated well (dash lines) because of the increasing aggregate lengths.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Three-dimensional plot illustrates distribution of average lengths of corresponding N-terminal, C-terminal, and internal linker sequences in every genome analyzed in Fig. 1. The coordinates of every genome (circle) were determined by plotting average lengths of linkers of all protein sequences in a genome.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Average domain and linker length plotted against CDS length for individual genomes.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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