Dataset Information

ProtParCon: A Framework for Processing Molecular Data and Identifying Parallel and Convergent Amino Acid Replacements.

ABSTRACT: Studying parallel and convergent amino acid replacements in protein evolution is frequently used to assess adaptive evolution at the molecular level. Identifying parallel and convergent replacements involves multiple steps and computational routines, such as multiple sequence alignment, phylogenetic tree inference, ancestral state reconstruction, topology tests, and simulation of sequence evolution. Here, we present ProtParCon, a Python 3 package that provides a common interface for users to process molecular data and identify parallel and convergent amino acid replacements in orthologous protein sequences. By integrating several widely used programs for computational biology, ProtParCon implements general functions for handling multiple sequence alignment, ancestral-state reconstruction, maximum-likelihood phylogenetic tree inference, and sequence simulation. ProtParCon also contains a built-in pipeline that automates all these sequential steps, and enables quick identification of observed and expected parallel and convergent amino acid replacements under different evolutionary assumptions. The most up-to-date version of ProtParCon, including scripts containing user tutorials, the full API reference and documentation are publicly and freely available under an open source MIT License via GitHub. The latest stable release is also available on PyPI (the Python Package Index).

SUBMITTER: Yuan F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6471834 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

<i>ProtParCon</i>: A Framework for Processing Molecular Data and Identifying Parallel and Convergent Amino Acid Replacements.

Yuan Fei F Nguyen Hoa H Graur Dan D

Genes 20190226 3

Studying parallel and convergent amino acid replacements in protein evolution is frequently used to assess adaptive evolution at the molecular level. Identifying parallel and convergent replacements involves multiple steps and computational routines, such as multiple sequence alignment, phylogenetic tree inference, ancestral state reconstruction, topology tests, and simulation of sequence evolution. Here, we present <i>ProtParCon</i>, a Python 3 package that provides a common interface for users ...[more]

PMID: 30813627

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Project description:BackgroundRare genomic changes (RGCs) that are thought to comprise derived shared characters of individual clades are becoming an increasingly important class of markers in genome-wide phylogenetic studies. Recently, we proposed a new type of RGCs designated RGC_CAMs (after Conserved Amino acids-Multiple substitutions) that were inferred using genome-wide identification of amino acid replacements that were: i) located in unambiguously aligned regions of orthologous genes, ii) shared by two or more taxa in positions that contain a different, conserved amino acid in a much broader range of taxa, and iii) require two or three nucleotide substitutions. When applied to animal phylogeny, the RGC_CAM approach supported the coelomate clade that unites deuterostomes with arthropods as opposed to the ecdysozoan (molting animals) clade. However, a non-negligible level of homoplasy was detected.ResultsWe provide a direct estimate of the level of homoplasy caused by parallel changes and reversals among the RGC_CAMs using 462 alignments of orthologous genes from 19 eukaryotic species. It is shown that the impact of parallel changes and reversals on the results of phylogenetic inference using RGC_CAMs cannot explain the observed support for the Coelomata clade. In contrast, the evidence in support of the Ecdysozoa clade, in large part, can be attributed to parallel changes. It is demonstrated that parallel changes are significantly more common in internal branches of different subtrees that are separated from the respective common ancestor by relatively short times than in terminal branches separated by longer time intervals. A similar but much weaker trend was detected for reversals. The observed evolutionary trend of parallel changes is explained in terms of the covarion model of molecular evolution. As the overlap between the covarion sets in orthologous genes from different lineages decreases with time after divergence, the likelihood of parallel changes decreases as well.ConclusionThe level of homoplasy observed here appears to be low enough to justify the utility of RGC_CAMs and other types of RGCs for resolution of hard problems in phylogeny. Parallel changes, one of the major classes of events leading to homoplasy, occur much more often in relatively recently diverged lineages than in those separated from their last common ancestor by longer time intervals of time. This pattern seems to provide the molecular-evolutionary underpinning of Vavilov's law of homologous series and is readily interpreted within the framework of the covarion model of molecular evolution.

Dataset Information

ProtParCon: A Framework for Processing Molecular Data and Identifying Parallel and Convergent Amino Acid Replacements.

Publications

<i>ProtParCon</i>: A Framework for Processing Molecular Data and Identifying Parallel and Convergent Amino Acid Replacements.

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