European Molecular Biology Organization

LUISI, PIERRE; DAVID ALVAREZ-PONCE; MARC PYBUS; MARIO A. FARES; JAUME BERTRANPETIT; HAFID LAAYOUNI

Leicester

Conferencia; Human evolution in the genomic era: origins, populations and phenotypes; 2014

European Molecular Biology Organization

Gene evolution is largely influenced by the biological context in which the encoded protein performs its intrinsic function(s). The phenotype, not the genotype, is at the interface with natural selection. Thus, in order to understand gene evolution, and particularly when considering adaptive selection, it is crucial to reduce the gap between genotype and phenotype. Genes and proteins do not act in isolation, but rather interact one with others in order to perform a given biological function. Therefore, when studying natural selection at molecular level one promising framework is to consider gene networks. I will describe studies of gene networks describing the Insulin/TOR transduction signalling cascade and the whole protein-protein physical interaction map. Those studies hold very striking results: genes acting at the core of both networks, thus having either more effect on a given phenotype or more pleiotropic effects within the organism, are more likely to be targeted by recent positive selection in humans, as inferred using polymorphism data.