TY - JOUR
T1 - Nonrandomness in protein sequences
T2 - Evidence for a physically driven stage of evolution?
AU - Pande, Vijay S.
AU - Grosberg, Alexander Y.
AU - Tanaka, Toyoichi
PY - 1994/12/20
Y1 - 1994/12/20
N2 - The sequences, or primary structures, of existing biopolymers-in particular, proteins-are believed to be a product of evolution. Are the sequences random? If not, what is the character of this nonrandomness? To explore the statistics of protein sequences, we use the idea of mapping the sequence onto the trajectory of a random walk, originally proposed by Peng et al. [Peng, C.-K., Buldyrev, S. V., Goldberger, A. L., Havlin, S., Sciortino, F., Simons, M. and Stanley, H. E. (1992) Nature (London) 356, 168-170] in their analysis of DNA sequences. Using three different mappings, corresponding to three basic physical interactions between amino acids, we found pronounced deviations from pure randomness, and these deviations seem directed toward minimization of the energy of the three-dimensional structure. We consider this result as evidence for a physically driven stage of evolution.
AB - The sequences, or primary structures, of existing biopolymers-in particular, proteins-are believed to be a product of evolution. Are the sequences random? If not, what is the character of this nonrandomness? To explore the statistics of protein sequences, we use the idea of mapping the sequence onto the trajectory of a random walk, originally proposed by Peng et al. [Peng, C.-K., Buldyrev, S. V., Goldberger, A. L., Havlin, S., Sciortino, F., Simons, M. and Stanley, H. E. (1992) Nature (London) 356, 168-170] in their analysis of DNA sequences. Using three different mappings, corresponding to three basic physical interactions between amino acids, we found pronounced deviations from pure randomness, and these deviations seem directed toward minimization of the energy of the three-dimensional structure. We consider this result as evidence for a physically driven stage of evolution.
KW - correlations
KW - origin of life
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U2 - 10.1073/pnas.91.26.12972
DO - 10.1073/pnas.91.26.12972
M3 - Article
C2 - 7809157
AN - SCOPUS:0028557353
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 91
SP - 12972
EP - 12975
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 26
ER -