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Better Understanding Of Neurodegenerative Disease May Result From New Study Of Gene Evolutionn

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/116120.php
25 Jul 2008

Genetic evolution is strongly shaped by genes' efforts to prevent or tolerate errors in the production of proteins, scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University have found.

Their study also suggests that the cost of errors in protein production may lie in the malformed proteins themselves, rather than in the loss of functional proteins. Misfolded proteins can build up in long-lived cells, like neurons, and cause neurodegenerative diseases.

The work, by Claus Wilke at The University of Texas at Austin and D. Allan Drummond at Harvard, is described in the July 25 issue of the journal Cell.

"It has long been believed that the main force of natural selection on protein-coding genes is the need to maintain a working protein," says Drummond, a Bauer Fellow in Harvard's FAS Center for Systems Biology. "Our work suggests that another force may be equally important: the need to avoid misfolded proteins resulting from errors in translation."

Wilke says the study may lead to better ways to detect genes with mutations that lead to production of toxic, misfolded proteins, and ultimately, to a better understanding of neurodegenerative disease.

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