Scientists at Harvard University and the University of Texas at Austin have found that genetic evolution is strongly shaped by genes' efforts to prevent or tolerate errors in protein production. Their study also suggests that the cost of errors in protein production may lie in the malformed proteins themselves, rather than the loss of functional proteins. Misfolded proteins can build up in long-lived cells, like neurons, and cause neurodegenerative diseases. The work, by D. Allan Drummond at Harvard and Claus O. Wilke at Texas, is described in the July 25 issue of the journal Cell. "It has long been believed that the main force of natural selection on protein-coding genes is the need to maintain a working protein," says Drummond, a Bauer Fellow in Harvard's FAS Center for Systems Biology. "Our work suggests that another force...
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