Evolutionary Analysis of Domain ArrangeMents (EVADAM); Evolutionäre Analyse von Domänenarrangements

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Erich Bornberg-Bauer
• Subject Area: Bioinformatics and Theoretical Biology
• Term: from 2008 to 2013
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 69260766

Protein evolution can, to a large extent, be described as the rearrangement of modules, typically structural domains. Many modules are versatile as they occur in many different combinations, or linear arrangements. Their sequence signatures, e.g. HMM profiles, are stored in databases such as PRODOM or Pfam. Proteins can thus not only be represented as strings of amino acids but also as strings of domain IDs (IDentifiers) taken from these data bases. Only recently it emerged that this representation is efficient and useful, for example for finding biomedically important links or constructing phylogenies. Here we propose to investigate the evolutionary origin of modular arrangements. We are particularly interested in understanding why some domains are more versatile than others. (A:) We focus on the possible causes of this biased versatility such as function, structure or age. (B:) We investigate, in more detail, the frequency and functional implications of specific evolutionary events creating new arrangements such as retrotranspositions, disruptive insertions and domain emergence. This project is embedded in a larger effort as we also develop methods to investigate arrangements and their evolution by reconstructing their phylogenies, multiple alignments and visualisation tools. We propose these analyses and methods based on strings of domains to pave the way for a better understanding of molecular evolution. They are fast and complementary to established methods using strings of amino acids.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants