BIOINFORMATICS Family specific rates of protein evolution

Abstract

Motivation: Amino acid changing mutations in proteins are contstrained by purifying selection and accumulate at different rates. We estimate evolutionary rates on multiple alignments of eukaryotic protein families in a maximum likelihood framework and spot sets of slowly and fast evolving proteins. Results: We find that the evolution of indispensable proteins is constrained by selection and that protein secretion is coupled to an increased evolutionary rate. Contact