Evolution and the structural domains of proteins
Babul, J.
Archivos de Biologia y Medicina Experimentales 20(3-4): 333-341
1987
ISSN/ISBN: 0004-0533 PMID: 8816074 Document Number: 302223
Domains are regarded as the basic units of globular proteins and are associated to protein function, folding, and evolution. The occurrence of similar domains in different proteins has led to the proposal of divergent evolution from a common ancestral gene that has been duplicated and fused with a variety of different genes, which suggests that large proteins have been constructed using a modular mechanism in which domains are the building blocks. The appearance of proteins with new or different functions could then arise by exon recombination since these protein coding units frequently correspond to protein structural domains. Some aspects of the evolution of phosphofructokinase are assessed from this standpoint.