ArticleMolecular biology and evolution2016
Membrane Proteins Are Dramatically Less Conserved than Water-Soluble Proteins across the Tree of Life.
Article in Molecular biology and evolution, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers.
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Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed, 77 citations in OpenAlex.
- Dynamic remodeling of membrane proteins for temperature adaptation in oysters.Zoological research · 2026Article
- Screen for signatures of positive selection in the core genome ofMicrobial genomics · 2026Article
- Genome-centric metagenomics reveals electroactive syntrophs in a conductive particle-dependent consortium from coastal sediments.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Predictors of Protein Evolution in the drosophilid Immune System.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Quantification of Membrane Protein Conformational Free Energy from Mutations and a Single Atom.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2025Article
- Cell Compartment is a Predictor of Protein Rate of Evolution, but not in the Manner Expected: Evidence Against the Extended Complexity Hypothesis.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Article
- Cofitness network connectivity determines a fuzzy essential zone in open bacterial pangenome.mLife · 2024Article
- EncoMPASS: An encyclopedia of membrane proteins analyzed by structure and symmetry.Structure (London, England : 1993) · 2024Article
- Computational Characterization of Membrane Proteins as Anticancer Targets: Current Challenges and Opportunities.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- High quality de novo genome assembly of the non-conventional yeast Kazachstania bulderi describes a potential low pH production host for biorefineries.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Physiological potential and evolutionary trajectories of syntrophic sulfate-reducing bacterial partners of anaerobic methanotrophic archaea.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Systematic comparison of unilamellar vesicles reveals that archaeal core lipid membranes are more permeable than bacterial membranes.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Intergenic Regions of Saccharomycotina Yeasts are Enriched in Potential to Encode Transmembrane Domains.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Analysis of lineage-specific protein family variability in prokaryotes combined with evolutionary reconstructions.Biology direct · 2022Article
- The Origin(s) of Cell(s): Pre-Darwinian Evolution from FUCAs to LUCA : To Carl Woese (1928-2012), for his Conceptual Breakthrough of Cellular Evolution.Journal of molecular evolution · 2021Article
- CoelacanthJournal of virology · 2021Article
- Determination of the membrane topology of PORCN, an O-acyl transferase that modifies Wnt signalling proteins.Open biology · 2021Article
- Review
- Refining pairwise sequence alignments of membrane proteins by the incorporation of anchors.PloS one · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Membrane proteins are crucial in transport, signaling, bioenergetics, catalysis, and as drug targets. Here, we show that membrane proteins have dramatically fewer detectable orthologs than water-soluble proteins, less than half in most species analyzed. This sparse distribution could reflect rapid divergence or gene loss. We find that both mechanisms operate. First, membrane proteins evolve faster than water-soluble proteins, particularly in their exterior-facing portions. Second, we demonstrate that predicted ancestral membrane proteins are preferentially lost compared with water-soluble proteins in closely related species of archaea and bacteria. These patterns are consistent across the whole tree of life, and in each of the three domains of archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes. Our findings point to a fundamental evolutionary principle: membrane proteins evolve faster due to stronger adaptive selection in changing environments, whereas cytosolic proteins are under more stringent purifying selection in the homeostatic interior of the cell. This effect should be strongest in prokaryotes, weaker in unicellular eukaryotes (with intracellular membranes), and weakest in multicellular eukaryotes (with extracellular homeostasis). We demonstrate that this is indeed the case. Similarly, we show that extracellular water-soluble proteins exhibit an even stronger pattern of low homology than membrane proteins. These striking differences in conservation of membrane proteins versus water-soluble proteins have important implications for evolution and medicine.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.