Sequence-based structural signatures of genome evolution

Abstract

Among the multitude of methods available for the study of origin and evolution of various life forms on Earth, the phylogenetic approach, i.e. the delineation of natural genetic relatedness amongst different groups of organisms, has been of particular interest to evolutionary biologists. An approach towards analysing phylogeny is the comparison of genome sequences of extant organisms by a variety of computational techniques. These studies rely mostly on the similarity or dissimilarity in global character of the genome in terms of sequence, without any consideration to its structure. In this work, we report a potentially new methodology towards elucidation of molecular phylogeny. The approach considers a structural parameter of the genome, namely its flexibility, and uses it to compare the small subunit ribosomal ribonucleic acid (SSUrRNA) gene from a cross-section of species. We find that the flexibility pattern of the genome is strikingly similar in organisms that are closer in evolutionary distance than the ones that are separated. This method of comparison thus might be utilised in constructing phylogenetic trees from flexibility patterns derived from nucleotide sequence.