Conserved Interactions

Question

[GR]

Hi all,

Does anyone know whether the interactions are conserved over long-evolutionary time periods (> 300 mya). For example, if two genes are interacting in one species, will the orthologs of these two genes be still interacting in another species? Any good reference on this.

Thanks, RT

Answer 1

[miquelduranfrigola]

Hi RT,

I guess you are refering to the concept of "interologs". There are some papers out there (e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17535438) showing that many interactions (not all) are conserved along evolution.

There are two related concepts that you may want to check out:

• Network alignment www.netaligner.irbbarcelona.org)
• Coevolution in protein-protein interactions (see a Nature Genetics review by Alfonso Valencia)