Rate Of Evolution, Gc Content, Codon Usage And Rate Of Amino Acid Substitution

Question

[Pappu]

While trying to understand the evolution of a gene, I encountered the aforementioned variables. I am wondering how the interplay of these variables contribute to the evolution of the gene. How about the intron/exon content? Is there any other measurable variable which plays a key role? How can I determine the if any other gene has evolved similarly to this gene (probably functionally related/interacting proteins).

Please let me know if you are aware of any interesting state of art review/literature on it. I am sorry if this question sounds too naive or someone asking question without reading any paper/book.

Answer 1

[Charles Warden]

"Rate of evolution" and "rate of amino acid substitution" are related terms, with one being a more specific version of the other.

There are lots of evolutionary biology papers related to GC content (and probably codon usage as well), but I the trends are context specific (kind of like you asked for intron versus exon content).

For example, I was an author on a paper that showed that mutation rates at CpG sites varied from non-CpG sites and non-CpG site mutations were more sensitive to the generation time of the organism:

http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.0020163

http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=SaUd3isAAAAJ&citation_for_view=SaUd3isAAAAJ:u5HHmVD_uO8C

You can also probably use that paper to find other relevant sources (either previous publications cited in that paper or subsequent publications that cited that paper).

I realize that GC content is not exactly the same as CpG content, but I thought this might still be a useful example